Red Lights.

Red lights are never good.

I don’t understand what red did

To be branded bad, green good.

Stop blinking.

This contrast is too much, my eyes

can’t adjust to the in and out

over and over

The controls.

What’s wrong?

Who gave you that black

eye of broken glass

shards filling the cabin

like fairy dust helping me fly

towards you ever so slowly,

carefully.  Another lost boy drifting

homeless if home is a location–

a destination.

That hiss.

Air must be leaking.

The slow sound of death

as life runs like rats

hopelessly jumping ship.

Hurry.

Hurry hurry hurry

hurry hurry hurry

the fingers disobey.

A rebellion of the body

as it awakens in time

to witness the end.

Birth and death hand in hand,

lovers sharing a final embrace.

Oh bright stars!

Oh guiding light!

Come close, comfort me.

Envelop me in your

warmth one last time.

The ship

is dissolving

into darkness

but you

haven’t

abandoned

me.

I’ve reached

and

finally

have

touched.

Automated Mental Impression (AMI) for unknown being recovered 5 Dec. 326 G.E.

The Latest Tradeoff

Facebook recently announced a series of new initiatives, the largest of which they refer to as the Facebook Open Graph. In a nutshell what this means for users is websites are now able to provide specific information to Facebook about themselves (and about you). If you log into a site, such as Pandora, using your Facebook profile, it will start broadcasting your likes, dislikes, and listens back to Facebook. Facebook then has the ability to share this information with your friends, advertisers, or the general public. ReadWriteWeb has a more in depth explanation of the details of this announcement from the perspective of a user.

The implications of this announcement are tremendous. Previously Facebook sought to be the owner and manager of personal data that you entered into its system (and it has succeeded extremely well so far). With this new initiative, it seeks to track and own not just your personal information, but also your activity across the web.

This may sound like an incredible idea, being able to have the convenience of personalizing your web experience along with the ability to track and compare the activities, likes, and dislikes of your Facebook friends across any site on the web. It also enables websites to hook into a subset of Facebook’s social features rather than trying to build their own. The fine print behind this new convenience is that it comes at the expense of privacy.

Facebook has a poor history of respecting its users’ privacy and has changed its privacy defaults and terms of use many times in the past. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO, has a very loose view of privacy in the modern age so it’s no surprise that his company’s choices have reflected this philosophy. A few people have up and left Facebook altogether in light of these recent announcements.

Facebook is slowly becoming the online identity for a majority of users. An online identity that you don’t have fine grained control over and owned by an entity that may publicize or share information about you at the drop of a hat. This concept of a centralized identity controller is absurd at best, and frightening at worst. But the real problem here isn’t really Facebook at all, it’s the general concept of a central manager of user information.

How Things Should Work

In my vision of a perfect world, you would have complete control your personal data, who has access to which parts of it, and where it is hosted. Websites that want access to information about you would have to request it from you and you could set access controls to filter which sites/friends have access to what data. This system would be decentralized so no single entity would be able to control and manipulate your personal information. This idea is far from the current status quo but I do not think it is an unachievably utopian ideal. In fact I think it is a necessary step for the future of privacy and online social interaction. Your data should be owned by you, not your social network. I will save the implementation details behind this idea for another post, but rest assured there are plenty of obstacles to its adoption, Facebook being the largest of these.

What Next?

I mentioned above that Facebook isn’t the root problem, but they are the largest and most pervasive manifestation of that problem that exists today. I have considered, in the time since these announcements, whether or not I will remain on Facebook. Currently I am still hesitating on this decision, but in the meantime I will be deleting most of my profile information. A friend of mine went so far as to create an alias account with a fake name and minimal profile information that she intends to use while she deletes her old account. This is not a decision I make for personal reasons as I truly believe I have nothing to hide. I am taking these actions because I fear what this subtle and behind the scenes erosion of privacy means for the future of online interaction and the security of our democracy.

I don’t expect everybody who reads this to spin into a firey rage and delete their facebook profiles or their data. All I ask of you, dear reader, is that you attempt to understand the implications of your actions with regards to privacy. Understand that any information you allow Facebook to access may be used however they see fit. Any privacy controls you specify in your settings are not guaranteed to be permanent or specific. Understand that this means that information might be shared with the public, advertisers, government agencies, stalkers, bosses, etc. Understand what implicit support of these policies might mean for the future of privacy.

I’m have written this post with the assumption that people accept the political and social importance of privacy. If this is a false assumption please let me know and I will craft another post specifically around that topic. My simple point here is that when someone else owns/controls our online identities, any “privacy” we are ensured is a smoke screen that can be blown away on a whim.

from http://www.yesbutnobutyes.com/3403409600_f51b9f3eb7.jpg.jpg found by Double M

1. What is reputation, why does it matter, and how much should we care about it?
2. In regards to #1, what is privacy and how does it affect our lives. Where does it’s importance lie and how should it be protected? (I’m probably not going to even attempt to speculate on this one. At least not without doing some research first.)
3. At what point does it become necessary to know everything about something you are doing? For example, when doing something, is it necessary to know the history and motivation behind every action? This question was raised by a recent short discussion about religion, but I think it applies in a more general sense.

I guess I’ll start on #1 and see where things go from there. I used to be incredibly over-concerned with what other people thought about me. Then I went through a phase where I basically said “Fuck you, world” and didn’t care at all (at least that was my ideal). Now I find myself somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. A large reason for this reversion to the middle has been exposure to professional environments. I have always known that it is important to be well liked and respected professionally in order to really go places in a corporate world. However it is only somewhat recently that I have given in and decided to play the “game.”

I am of the opinion that reputation is important since we are social creatures. We’re stuck together and are going to form opinions about one another, so why would you not want that opinion to be a good one?

Networking is still something that I have issues with. It still seems incredibly self-centered and fake to be making “friends” only with the hope that they can somehow help you get promoted or make more money or something similar. I understand that this isn’t necessarily the only reason to meet and befriend professional contacts, but I think it is the driving one in many cases. I find it incredibly difficult to make small talk with somebody simply because doing so might let them know I exist. Now this is completely different from just being friendly. I’m talking about the following type of thought: “That guy is the vice president of . I should go talk to him because he would be a good person to know professionally and might help me out in the future.”

I have no problem with wanting to be successful. I’m just saying I feel dirty whenever I try to do something like the above scenario.

On a purely personal level, I think the line is actually harder to draw. At one extreme we have the person with no regard for others’ opinions of her. At the other we have the person who’s every action is dictated by what others might make of it. I’m still somewhat inclined to side more with the first person’s perspective. I have yet to hear really good arguments for why I should care what any random person thinks about me. Of course there is the idea that I want people to like me so that I can have friends and people to talk to or hang out with (going back to the whole social creatures thing). How far can you extend this? Also, when does not caring (or at least acting like you don’t care) become another way of enticing people to think more highly of you?

So from what I’ve said so far, it seems to me like personal reputation is itself a purely selfish thing. On a purely individual level, I don’t know if there is anything that isn’t selfish about it. Not that this is necessarily bad. However anytime you become a member of a group or organization then your reputation adds to the collective reputation of the group and any actions damaging to your reputation are also damaging to the group. In this case there is a level of unselfishness and responsibility involved.

I think I am actually more confused at the end of this post than when I started. I attribute some of this to lack of sleep. Anyway I will maybe be able to address the other questions above in later posts. I just needed to get them down as to not forget.

What follows is an account of sorts. I say of sorts because it is not the type of account you might be used to. This account is of a young man. What is extraordinary about this young man’s account? Well the fact that instead of typing I am analyzing every sentence, consciously or subconsciously for possible interpretations that could lead to some sort of idea about me as a person. The fact that I told you exactly that I’m doing that tells quite a bit itself in a step the other way. I told my self I wasn’t going to the fuck care at all below. However it’s not something easily stopped or remedied. But once again I digress. Back to the man’s account.

Well this young man woke up one morning on a typical day in the place where he typically woke up. Nothing was out of the ordinary is what I am trying to stress. But what exactly ordinary is is probably defined differently wherever you are. I wonder if it’s sort of the simple statistical average or linear regression or something. The norm so to speak. It is becomming hard to type, I must take my leave for now. ‘Till we meet again. (Now I search for kickass song lyrics… or just copy what I hear right now)

As for why I decided to put this information on the internet, it’s mostly a product of my ego. It’s here and public on the off chance that someone might find my posts interesting or at least worth reading.

The following manifesto is mostly for my personal use to serve as a reminder for why I created this blog. It’s use to the reader is fairly limited.

My intention is to avoid turning this into a typical LiveJournal page where I write about how much life sucks. I also do not intend to write about day-to-day activities unless they spur some interesting idea. There will probably be times where I simply do a stream of consciousness post as well. I kind of like the practice of posting song lyrics at the end of posts, so I will probably do that, at least for a while. I expect my posts to vary quite a bit in level of language, civility, soberness, etc. I have no real aim nor goal with this blog so I don’t much care how I come off.

Criticisms and other thoughts are more than welcome as comments, but I will most likely not respond to comments who’s only intention is to flame.