The Obama Administration and the Cry for Mobile and Digital Privacy

This post would be an excellent follow-up to my social media post about facebook and other networking sites. It seems that the Obama administration is seeking to crack down on the invasion of citizens' consumer privacy, proposing a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, that would provide restrictions on the availability of your personal information, as well as a code of conduct for what may be done with that information. If I'm completely honest, I am torn on this issueeiiII KNOW. WAIT. wait wait. Hear me out.

While I agree that the idea of your ISP and your Phone company tracking your locations via your smartphone without your permission is, at the very least, strange. And the information handed over to marketers and advertisers about your habits and lifestyle gives them the upper hand at manipulating you into buying their products and services.

But.

In my experience, most of the people who complain about their privacy rights being infringed upon are the people who make their "privacy" as public as they possibly can. Say you have a smart phone, you know, one of those tiny pocket computers the kids have now so they can play the Grumpy Pigeons game while they're on the toilet. If you use it for social networking, they track your tweets and status updates by location, and if you happen to use foursquare...forget about it. While you're staging a coup, trying to finally oust that smug jerk in the cubicle across from yours as Mayor of the 12th floor Mens' room, you're willingly handing out your location at every second to LITERALLY ANYONE with an internet connection who wanted to bother finding it. You have no legal expectation of privacy, so it cannot be invaded. It's like going around taping copies of your social security card to payphones in a subway station and then trying to say that somebody stole your identity. They didn't. You taped your identity up in a public place and left it alone, any reasonable person would expect it to have immediately disappeared, used to open a credit card in your name, and charges for a Ferrari to show up on your accounts within the next 36 hours, but it seems that reason goes out the window when the information translates from tangible to digital. People seem to assume that just because they are using their own digital device, that there is some cloak of anonymity to protect them from being the target of a Ruby Tuesday's ad, while they use their iPhone to post a low-contrast vintage photo of their Ruby Tuesday's Burger to instagram, and tweet it to their coworkers, tag the restaurant location, and all of the people at the table. ON THE INTERNET. These are the people who seem to believe that just because they are using the internet on their phone, that the information they enter will never really leave their hand.

I also feel that I must say, as a future marketing and advertising professional, I relish the thought of being able to conveniently screen peoples' habits to more easily sell them stuff they want. This sounds underhanded and sneaky, but really, it's been going on for years. Do you have store discount or rewards cards? You know, CVS extra care, Kmart Rewards, etc. These cards save you money, and they're free! Why, that's just the most altruistic...wha...what's that? You say they're not only a ploy to get you to become a loyal customer to that establishment, but also to subsequently provide data on your purchases, so the store and advertisers will have an easily quantifiable record of your buying habits so that they can crank up the prices or offer you store-specific coupons for the products you can't seem to live without? Ah. There it is. I know many people who complained endlessly when Verizon began making their customers' smart phone locations available to marketers looking to analyze commutes, routines, and all that, saying that their contract was breached and they couldn't wait to switch to AT&T. Not surprisingly, though, these same people were the ones who had a keyring that looked like a cheerleader's Pom-Pom it was so loaded up with a gas, grocery, pharmacy, bookstore, and even retail department store rewards cards for every establishment within ten miles of every place they had ever been, all hiding exactly TWO keys. These are the people who call to mind the recent story about the teenage girl who shopped regularly at Target, and just by noticing a small change, a sudden preference for unscented lotion over ones with fragrance in her usually consistent buying habits, Target realized that she was pregnant and somewhere in her second trimester where the sense of smell becomes heightened. So, knowing this, they began mailing coupons for diapers and cribs to her. At her parents house. Who had no idea she was pregnant. Outing the young expectant mother, who had no idea her purchases were being tracked and analyzed.

I may be biased in my experience, and limited in interaction with people who find digital and mobile privacy to be of dire importance. However, the way I see it, you are NOT paranoid. Your information IS everywhere. Everyone IS using it to manipulate you. But, it's also making life more convenient for you. Folks may find it creepy when the exact same rice-cooker they were just scoping out on Overstock.com pops up in an Amazon ad on the sidebar of their facebook page, in the color they wanted that Overstock didn't have, for $12 less. I see that and say "That's amazing, I gave amazon my personal information when I bought that 18-box pallet of Count Chocula, and now they're using it to try and sell me that rice cooker THAT I WAS TOTALLY GOING TO BUY ANYWAY. JACKPOT." Sure it's a little frightening to think of major corporations recording your every digital move and using that information for profit. But you know what scares me more? The thought of these major corporations having to hand over all that information to the Government. At least I know why Amazon.com wants to know where I tend to be from noon to 3:30pm every day. I don't care to think what the Government might want with singular access to that information, but it's probably not to try and convince me to buy the top three items on my wishlist.

Ezine Post! These are a bit out of order it seems!

Alright, well, right now it looks terrible. I know this. However, this is the basic layout idea. Romancing the Stove will be an E-Zine about cooking and baking, featuring mostly cakes, cupcakes, and pastries, recipes, baking and cooking blogs, forums, news, and other exciting features. I want it to have a sort of romantic, vintage look. I want lots of texture, muted colors and floral patterns. The page displayed here is the "Recipe" page that would come up as a long list if the "recipe" button is clicked, or if the Cameo Symbol is clicked, it would bring up the "Recipe of the Month". It includes a photo, description, title, and the actual recipe of course. Many pages would be laid out in much the same way.

Like I said before, this is hard to look at. It's very busy, the colors are too intense, and it isn't how I want it yet, but it gives the general idea of what design features might go into different pages. Think of this as a sort of "swatch" page for the rest of the site, and try not to strain your eyes.

Interesting sidenote: My blog posts are being posted WAY out of order from which they were assigned. But they will all be here eventually! Hopefully that isn't too frustrating, but apologies to my professor and classmates who have to read them.

Design Blog 2: Steepster, The Communi-Tea

http://steepster.com/teas

I'm not entirely sure that anyone will be able to view the site in its entirety without creating an account or logging in with facebook, but I think that Steepster is a very well-designed community site. It adheres to the classical design principles, introduces some new ones, and is VERY user-friendly.

Apologies to followers and professor, I thought I hit post on this last week, but I guess I just saved it as a draft! Late post notice, but better late than never! Right?

Week 1 of Design Blog: New Internet Policies and International Blog Censorship

The internet has been under fire from all directions recently, with the rise of SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, and other proposed legislation in the U.S. and Canada, it's no surprise that countries under less democratic rule are having their free cyberspeech threatened tenfold. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, bloggers in Vietnam are being detained for speaking out against their government or criticisms of the communist regime. Google has been compliant with these laws, instated under the guise of national security, by creating a location-specific availability filter that uses IP addresses to register locations. It provides a way to circumvent this filter by using a non-country-specific URL. Also, China has been shutting down Tibetan blogs without explanation, after decades of tension between the minority group and the Chinese government.

The censorship of the internet and the prosecution of those using it, while unsurprising, is wrong. The internet has lost it's element of total anonymity, and now postings are quite easily traced back to unique IP addresses and individuals. This makes blogging much riskier for those with dissenting opinions posting in environments with strict speech regulations. As Americans, we sometimes forget, that though our liberties are occasionally lessened for the sake of "national security", we are still relatively free to openly criticize and oppose our governmental processes and leaders. In other countries without protection of free speech, harsher punishments await those who suggest dissent in a public forum. Google, whom I would have expected to absolutely oppose these censorship laws, has enabled this policy that complies with them, though they offer a way around the filters, "NCR" URLs may not be made readily known to everyone. The fact that this policy was released quietly, hidden under the outcry over Twitter's new censorship policy, doesn't make it any less oppressive.

The implications of these policies are unclear for now, but a future may still come when such standards could be applied to us here in the United States. There can always be found some loophole or adjustment to be made that will allow these impositions by the way of "protection" and "national security". SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA, are only the beginning, in my opinion. These and other short-sighted legislations could easily be passed and our liberties would be just as limited as those affected by China and Vietnam's new censorship policies, especially since Google already seems to be on board.

What are the implications? Where will free speech on the internet be in five years? Ten? What can we do to make sure the "World Wide Web" remains just that? With Iran throwing the Kill switch, China and Vietnam detaining and shutting down bloggers for their opinions, and the United States and Canadian Governments working to take down Piracy without analysis, where do we draw the line between liberty and security? Food for thought.

This Begins a New Chapter in Connois-saurus Blog History

Hello, all! This semester, I am taking a web design course; and from this post on, until the end of the semester my posts will be about the wonderful world of web design! Thanks to all three of my current followers for being patient with me!

Social Networking and Its Effect on Meatspace. What's changed?

Okay, so. Today I want to talk about social media and networking. However, I want to focus less on the marketing and advertising aspects of it, and more on how it has evolved into a legitimate medium. With the recent introduction of Google's new social networking faction, Google+, and its unique features, other social networking sites have been endeavoring to keep up and compete. G+ introduces new features, namely the concept of "circles" which allows you to specify certain groups of friends, acquaintances, family, coworkers, etc.; and choose which groups get to see what you've posted (which Facebook has recently adopted). It also borrows features from other networking sites like Twitter's "status-only" form of posting, it's less direct and there is no "wall" feature like that of Facebook, although it does allow you to "tag" people in your posts with a "+" before their name. Just as Twitter (and subsequently Facebook) did with the "@".

Now, social networking sites have evolved over the past few years. I remember when Myspace and Xanga were the big deal, but nobody really paid attention unless they were in middle school. Then Facebook came along and restructured that same concept for the slightly older crowd. Now, however, social networking is no longer just a petty, self-absorbed forum on which to tell your friends what you're having for lunch, and where, and with whom, and a picture of it. I mean, well, it's also that, BUT it has become a legitimate, integral part of our society. For every Junior High School student posting song lyrics about teen drama and angst, there are legitimate businesses, charitable communities, sports teams, political organizations, video blogs, and easily-accessible celebrities. Facebook and YouTube have, I believe, played the most fundamental roles in this reshaping of how we network. YouTube videos and Facebook pages have become a legitimate medium for news, campaigning, and business networking. Facebook offers the option of making a page for your business at no cost. This provides advertising outreach to every user of the site who happens to stumble upon it. YouTube has become a place for businesses to purchase advertising time prior to videos in order to reach audiences who have reduced or abandoned television, in favor of more web-based entertainment or news. Even websites that were not originally designed as social networking sites have begun to take on some of its elements. Yahoo! has recently introduced a new feature for instantly sharing photos and publicly posted messages with all of your contacts on a social forum, and websites like StumbleUpon encourage you to create contacts with others and share your discoveries with them.

It seems strange for those of us who remember saying "Who cares? It's just Facebook." to think that potential employers have now hired entire departments of people whose only job is to screen the social networking histories of applicants with the same gravity with which they would perform a criminal background check. Or to realize that in the hustle and bustle of our increasingly busy days, a majority (if not all) of our social interactions happen on a screen. We are so desperate to stay connected with such demands on our time that smart phones are improving almost weekly to provide a more user-friendly interface with which to carry our social and professional lives around in our pockets.

Our society has shifted so much into a virtual world that now, I've noticed, starting with Google+, more and more privacy features are being introduced. We began social networking, despite its very nature, with a certain degree of anonymity. We were connected with whom we chose, just friends with our friends, and we felt free to blurt out every thought to share with the people who "got us" under the protective veil of the internet. Insecurities and inhibitions that kept us quiet in the real world dissolved. Photo tagging began, and our friends made plans to get together with the specific intention of taking photos to tag their friends in. Picture phones and compact digital cameras became constant companions to social networkers. Then parents, grandparents, and teachers got the hang of it, the younger generations became professionals, businesses began advertising their products and screening potential employees, all of our media websites began linking up with each other and offering to find our contacts from email and other website lists, our search results and listed interests began popping up verbatim in the banner ads on the sides of our screens, and that freedom to say whatever we wanted with impunity was banished to the mildewed comment sections of a few special interest sites, and bathroom stall graffiti. Social media has, for lack of a better word, infiltrated every aspect of our lives. Social, romantic, professional, academic; there are instant notifications for breaking news stories and every hobby, interest, and school of thought is represented in some form of online community. Recently, hanging on to the idea of being connected while retaining privacy or anonymity seems almost a bit naive. Though privacy features are being increased, soon social networks and media will offer us no more privacy or freedom than the physical realm, and no less pressure to adapt our behavior and profile settings accordingly.

Marshall McLuhan wrote about human beings creating and using technology as a necessary extension of our bodies in order to maintain equilibrium with our physical environment, such as wearing clothing and building shelters to protect us from the elements and give us privacy. Now that this tangible equilibrium has been reached (or can be with relative ease) in many modern societies, we are instead focusing on a virtual environment and inventing, by the same exact process, virtual tools and extensions needed to cope with it. Social networking may someday replace most or all of our face-to-face interaction and society, we may be a generation away from putting on a pair of goggles and living our lives in a world that is entirely virtual. Whatever the progression, one thing is for sure, the World Wide Web is vastly extending our World Wide World.

This Is Your Brain on Ads

Well, readers, I've probably mentioned before that I'm a huge nerd, and this post is about to bring it home. Because today, my lovelies, we will be talking about consumer manipulation through brain function.

Remember that commercial for the topical headache product that featured one woman who appeared to be really happy to be rubbing her child's glue stick on her forehead for 30 seconds? Remember how annoying it was?

  

Just in case.

Well, I was convinced for the longest time that this was the most ineffective advertising strategy in the history of consumerism. However, some recent research and consideration about the function of the human brain has encouraged me to rethink this opinion. Turns out I was wrong! Repetitive slogans, images, jingles and even repeated commercials are effective because the part of the brain that is responsible for repetitive tasks and behaviors and the part of the brain that controls analytical decision making can't seem to operate very well at the same time. One of these faculties will take over while the other pants pathetically in the background. Theories exist stating that this is why professional athletes "choke" when shooting free throws and kicking field goals during big games. The anxiety throws the analytical part of their brain into high gear and even though they've been kicking a ball for years, the simple, repetitive task becomes almost impossible. This is the same reason why it's difficult to give someone detailed directions to a place that you drive to every single day, and why I can operate a cash register just fine unless my boss is watching me. The same is true for the reverse, when you are being barraged with the same repeated phrase over and over, it's difficult for your brain to receive that information while analyzing it and making a decision. So when advertisers use this strategy, they are effectively temporarily blocking the brain function that analyzes information, while stimulating the part of your brain that urges you to apply HeadOn directly to your forehead...and not just because the commercial gives you a headache.