Outline

(this is a sketchy outline of my thesis.. 6/19/02)

Chapter 1: Introduction (a.k.a. What is the story i'm trying to tell?)

• The novel work in this thesis is:
  • a theoretical discussion about why context and self and self-awareness and self-representation is not the same online and offline
  • a tool for reflection of one's identity
  • a tool for managing the contexts of one's identity
• Why is this work important?
  • · Individual empowerment == self awareness + self management
• the result is a very different social atmosphere online than off, with different rules, regulations and expectations that are not accessible to most people. Online spaces seem confusing or misleading, full of deception and invasion… this is problematic and frustrating to many people
• because of its current architecture, the social aspect of the digital realm is not progressing… trust is not really building, but being eliminated…
• digital is becoming controlled by market/govt forces... self-empowerment would be good to balance other regulatory forces
• there is so much potential for the social realm that we should
  • understand the differences between the physical and digital (& assess what is lacking and what the social consequences are)
  • determine what must be replaced or worked around in order to give people acceptable social structure
  • [discuss why we want some of the good qualities of offline spaces, why the current state is not good enough... potential needs to factor in a desired social space]
• it would be good to have an understanding in order for social regulation to operate online
  • this would make the digital space more manageable and personal, because people would have the ability to self-regulate
  • market and law are not the desired answer to all regulation online; you want a balance of all forces, not just a fraction of them
• how? given some of this understanding, i believe that the best approach would be to
  • the design of systems must be considered, as they cannot be created in a void.
    • design needs to focus on people's needs as social beings, not just consumers and citizens (not just market/law regulatory processes)
    • design should create the ability for people to self-regulate, socially regulate
  • give people the ability for self-awareness and reflection
  • give people the tool's to control their own identity online
• structure. in this thesis, i will
  • review aspects of the self & identity relevant for this conversation, drawing from a wide variety of academic disciplines
  • discuss how and where they apply to the digital realm, what differences exist, and what the meaning of those differences is
  • discuss the importance of self-awareness tools, what exists out there so far, what data needs to be considered, why…
  • discuss one example that i've created (SNF) and go through it's gorey details
  • discuss tools for managing one's identity
  • use SecureId as an example of management and go through it's details

Chapter 2: Understanding the self, offline and on

• how do we talk about the self? what is one's identity?
  • Fragmented versus faceted ideas of identity
• how do people conceive of, perceive & present themselves? Each other?
  • goffman & performance
  • the value of the body
  • high & low self monitors
  • unconscious identity management
• why is context essential
  • spatial, temporal, (inter)personal
  • necessary for modulating self & understanding each other
• thinking about offline management of identity & presentation
  • not everything is presented, this isn't bad…
  • separating things along context for social appropriateness, self-protection
  • regulation through social norms (Lessig).. comes from being seen & seeing, and feeling social pressure
• the digital sphere is not identical to the physical one; people lack the ability to negotiate their self in the same mechanisms that they can offline
• how does the self not translate to the digital? Why do the metaphors fail us?
  • people are missing bodies (proper channels for projection and perception) and an understandable notion of context (spatial, temporal, personal)
  • Different notions of context
  • Inability to manage identity
  • Obliqueness of faceting behavior
  • [Scott comment: Still, offline facet flipping is near instantaneous, often effortless, often unconscious. Shouldn't it be the same online? If the tools are too visible, have we failed? Perhaps we want embedded mechanisms and ubiquitous design principles that support natural behavior as translated through virtual spaces. Not wheels to turn and levers to pull, but paths to walk and walls to guide.]

Chapter 3: Rethinking the notion of context

• What happens with context online?
  • Inability to get personal/spatial/temporal context info
  • Aggregation along spatial/temporal
  • Lack of context results in lack of regulation through social norms
• How do people manage?
  • Managing identity in convoluted manners (rebuilding context through emails/logins)
  • Anonymity, generic presentation
  • (response proposals for complete transparency)
• Why do the differences matter?
  • People come online with certain expectations that are broken
  • Huge lack of trust online, lack of social regulation resulting in really gross abuses of the digital domain
  • To handle, people present themselves in the most generic way
  • If this continues, the Internet will be for teenagers, bandits and commerce… boring.
• In order to make the digital a truly viable social environment
  • Creators need to understand and work with the architectural differences
  • People need to understand their behavior & others' online
  • People need to be able to manage who they are online, at least partially as well as they do physically

Chapter 4: Self Awareness

• Self-awareness lets us self-monitor and modulate our behaviors
  • Offline, our bodies give us awareness; people's reactions give us awareness… we know what data about us is being used, or have a good idea
  • Online, people aren't aware of the data that they produce, or what it means… without that awareness, it's hard to have a sense of how to act appropriately..
• Thinking about data
  • What data do we produce?
  • What does this information tell us? And others
  • How does this data make a different digital identity than our physical one?
  • Why is it important? (It gives us control over our own presentation, lets us see how other people can see us)
• Corporate systems and archives
  • Buddy lists, Profiles, Shopping history, want lists, Google search/archives, archive.org
  • Addressbooks, email history, saved messages
• Previous work with self-awareness tools
  • Personal awareness tools: GATech Mirrors
  • Social DataVis: Loom/Loom2, Visual Who, PostHistory
  • Data awareness: Netscan

Chapter 5: SNF, an example piece

• Social Network Fragments is an example of a self-awareness tool, directed specifically at the user to understand their own social world
• Theory of the program:
  • Social networks, clusters, bridges
  • Evaluating patterns of interaction, who is separated from whom (social networks, analysis of social clusters)
  • Understanding relations amidst contexts
• Implementation details
  • Relational metrics
  • Spring system, clustering algorithm
  • Zooming (Tufte)
  • Coloring, time - other dimensions of data
• Analysis of what you can learn about yourself/others using my own (and "Mike's") datasets as examples
• Critique
  • Limitations of spring system - don't give exact meanings of things
  • Can be hard to read because n-d system gets too messy, particularly if you have a core group of friends that everyone knows
  • Requires adjustments by the owner to get a really good view
• Programmatic improvements desired
  • Make the spring system realtime with a third dimension of time (would create much better layout routine, much more clear in ability to see stuff; computationally quite complex)
  • Allow for "recentering" based on one person for visibility
  • Improve the relational tie metrics: Measure data for "quality" not just "quantity", evaluate response time
  • Improve the context understanding: evaluate different types of linguistic patterns used (professional speak vs. friend speak)
  • use to look at an entire group (not just individual), seeing the relations evolve en masse

Chapter 6: Identity Management

• once we have a sense of who we are, we must then be given tools for managing our information, ourselves
  • how much transparency of our data do we want?
  • Who should have access to this data? When? Why? What?
  • How much control can we have over the data?
• what does management of identity information mean?
  • Done ubiquitously offline
  • Done through acl lists and explicit control online (although rarely actually managed)
• Management tools are focused on the "consumer"
  • Want authentication for legal or advertising purposes
  • passport, liberty alliance

Chapter 7: SecureId as example

• Theory
  • Construct separate facets that explicitly hold the contexts that one normally gets by physical location aspect of context, the situation
  • "secure" facets through knowledge
  • system operates as a mirror to one's activities, friends, data
  • you hold on to your data, not an external system (like wallets or passports)
• Implementation
• Complete diagrammed example scenario
• Critique
  • Explicit management is not the same as ubiquitous
  • Quite annoying to set these environments up
• Future thoughts
  • Ideal system would build up data about you, "learn" who you are in different facets, see your social networks and connect to them
  • Ideal system would collect & manage all of the data that you acquire/give out when interacting through each of the facet… operate as a memory
  • Should be able to automatically chose a facet and become that "face" using whatever program
  • [Scott question: At what level, ultimately, should face(t) support be implemented? OS level? App? Middleware? Net? A subtle but far-reaching issue.]

Chapter 8: Conclusions

• Digital != physical
  • The differences in context are too overlooked, but so important for understanding why the digital is taking the route that it currently is
• Individual empowerment == self awareness + self management
  • empowerment of the individual is a worthy goal, and must be worked towards to balance the market/government forces of the digital that will inevitably make it quite boring
• Knowledge/awareness necessary for users, for self-empowerment
  • Eliminates avoidance and fear
  • Visualizations are a powerful way of making information accessible.. but they must continue to be more intuitive and interactive
• give users a way to understand very complicated data
• give users a way to have self-reflection, like they do with their body & the interactions of others
• SNF is an example of this, focused on the most common behaviors... but it is not a complete answer; it has faults, and it is certainly not indicative of the whole person
• Managing data is not like the physical world, but it is necessary
  • We must design what types of control users should have; this inevitably means a difference in priorities between the public and the govt/corporations
  • Managment must get more ubiquitous, but how? Users must first understand what they are managing and why
  • SecureId starts to show what needs to be managed, but its interface shows the problems with explicit management
• This thesis stands to
  • Offer some explanations for the social impact of the differences between the digital & the physical
  • Offer an approach, focused on self-empowerment through self-awareness and self-management
  • Review previous approaches to each, and offer a new example of each