MAS 963: Techno-identity seminar

04.09.02 Databases and privacy

Readings:

• Jeffrey Rosen. The Unwanted Gaze. Prologue and chapter 2
• Roger Clarke Introduction to Dataveillance and Information Privacy

Assignment

Read Rosen article and look through Clarke's website. The latter is quite extensive and in addition to the page listed above, you may find that further exploration is quite interesting.

Your assignment is to present two opposing views describing the benefites and drawbacks of creating big databases of information about individuals.

• What are the most interesting, useful, intriguing, revolutionary things that can be done with such databases? How can they enhance life for the individual and improve society? In particular, how can they enhance the computer-mediated world, where identity is currently so sparsely depicted.
• What are the most serious drawbacks to creating such databases? Are there social or technological approaches that ameliorate these concerns? Under what circumstances are these drawbacks most serious?

Please submit your essay by Sunday morning, and spend some time before class reading over the other essays.