It's Not Easy Being Red
Editor's Note: If you have questions or comments for Terry, you can reach him in the IT Trends forum by clicking here.Uh oh, he's going to get all political. Nope. This has nothing to do
with red state versus blue state, despite the political season. Nor has
it anything to do with communist red, despite the current news about
relations between the United States and Russia. It has to do with the
proliferation of information that's getting closer and closer to home
with each new information technology advance. The "Red Folk" I refer to
in this title are people who have this natural urge to control things.
For them, life is getting tough.
I recently wrote about Google's SketchUp's "Build Your Campus in 3D"
competition, for which projects were submitted June 1. (See
Augmenting Reality: Measuring It First.) In it, I referenced the privacy issues voiced by many people. Right around the same time, a news item titled
The Google 'ick' Factor got a lot of attention and raised a whole heck of a lot of new privacy issues.
The feature provides high-resolution photos to enable street-level
tours so users can get a more realistic, 360-degree look at places they
might go or spots where they already have been. To guard against
privacy intrusions, Google said all the photos were taken from vehicles
driving along public streets during the past year. The photos will be
periodically updated, but the company
hasn't specified a timetable for doing so.
Now comes a news item about a suggestion from the Department of Homeland Security,
DHS Wants Cell Phones to Detect Chemical, Radioactive Material.
At the 2007 DHS Science and Technology Stakeholders
Conference, S&T Director of Innovation Roger McGinnis outlined how
the system could work. Cell phone sensors would continually test the
air for harmful compounds and digitally relay any information to a
central monitoring system if they find anything amiss.
***
S&T spokesman Christopher Kelly said the theoretical system's
strength would lie in the sheer number of sensors. The cell phone
sensors might be less sophisticated than highly advanced ones some
developers are fitting into hand-held models, but they would make up
for it in what Kelly called "ubiquitous detection."
The
idea is called "Cell-All." Personally, I think it is genius. Kind of in
the "SETI at Home" family of ideas and related to the
Smart Dust
concept that I've written a few times about. Only in this case, instead
of scattered dust-like particles, we have scattered human beings with
sensor-packed cell phones.
Picture being able to scatter hundreds of tiny sensors around a
building to monitor temperature or humidity. Or deploying, like pixie
dust, a network of minuscule, remote sensor chips to track enemy
movements in a
military operation.
Now, if you're like me you find this kind of stuff so exciting that,
reading about it, you might be quivering like a dog waiting for its
human to release the Frisbee. However, everyone is not like me.
A few weeks ago my office held its annual retreat. The primary exercise
involved staff members receiving and then exchanging small cards with
statements about themselves. Once we each had time to exchange the
cards to get ones that we felt described us, we were told that the
colors of the cards had something to do with grouping us in four
different categories that relate to working styles. It's likely that
you've done something like this before. There are a variety of
different such systems out there.
To no one's surprise, in this system I am a "Green." I like to start
things, not finish them; I value creativity and innovation over order.
When we staffers gathered by colors in the four corners of the space we
were in, we Green Folk were diametrically opposed to the Red Folk. In
my own personal interpretation of all this, the Red Folk are the people
who have to spend time trying to keep Green Folk somewhat under
control. You know: Have you turned in your credit card receipts yet?
Are you up to date on your time tracking.
Poor Red Folk! How can they even read the newspaper or browse websites?
Every day brings new revelations of how more and more information is
getting free and out of anyone's control. I recall one Red Person I
worked with years ago who was so outraged that the was speechless for
minutes and minutes the first time that I showed her that it was
possible to get a--at that time quite fuzzy--view of the roof of her
house.
Of course I am being a bit specious here, looking at people through
only one of many filters. When it comes to their personal information,
Red People definitely want to control others from having the
information. On the other hand, the Red Folk/Green Folk categorization
is often a matter of context, and I suspect that many campus-based
environmental health and safety people staff are certainly Red Folk in
their jobs. (I'm not just guessing about that; one of the many lists I
am on is for those people and they definitely have a red streak.)
Imagine their delight if they could have all of the patients, students,
staff, and faculty in a large teaching and research medical facility
carry these "Cell-All" devices!
Despite the concerns of some, there are many people who would want
these sensor-packed cell phones and who would be willing to pay for
them. Count me among the latter, so long as there's an "off" switch
that I can use. Also count me among those who like the Google
initiatives (that I know about), too. In other words, color me green.
It's not that I am incapable of feeling concern about privacy. It's
just that I see no way--and many experts agree--to make a perfectly
"safe" campus without creating a campus no one would want to spend time
on; ditto for the rest of the world. Like one person quoted in the
"ick" article said:
"It's a tough area, but it just seems there is no way
around the fact that public spaces are public spaces.... [Y]ou don't
want to create an environment where it becomes illegal to take photos
in public. It can be riskier not to be able to see something than it is
to be able to see something."
Editor's Note: If you have questions or comments for Terry, you can reach him in the IT Trends forum
by clicking here.
