The previous issue of First Monday contained papers from the Identity and Identification in a Networked World multidisciplinary graduate student symposium at the New York University School of Law, that discussed the critical issues of identity surrounding new digital media and information technologies. Tim Schneider summarises the symposium and the papers available online at First Monday:
Increasingly, who we are is represented by key pieces of information scattered throughout the data-intensive, networked world. Few spheres of our daily lives remain untouched by technologies of identity and identification: medical records are increasingly digitized and aggregated, loyalty cards collect shopping habits, Web cookies track online activities, electronic toll collection systems record vehicle locations, detailed user profile pages fill social networking Web sites, biometric scanners are in use at workplaces, banks, and airports. Online and off, the digitization of identity mediates our sense of self, social interactions, movements through space, and access to goods and services. There is much at stake in designing systems of identification and identity management, deciding who or what will control them, and building in adequate protection for our bits of identity permeating the network.
On September 29-30 2006, over 120 students, scholars and practitioners gathered at the “Identity and Identification in a Networked World” multidisciplinary graduate student symposium at the New York University School of Law to discuss the critical issues of identity surrounding new digital media and information technologies. This two-day event showcased emerging scholarship from 20 graduate students at the cutting edge of humanities, social sciences, systems design, philosophy, and law. Prof. Ian Kerr, Canada Research Chair in Ethics, Law & Technology at the University of Ottawa began the symposium with a keynote addresses on “DRM & the Automation of Virtue.” Dick Hardt, founder and CEO of Sxip Identity presented a keynote the second day entitled “The Emerging Age of Who.”
Over the course of the two days, participants discussed and debated the critical and controversial issues surrounding identity and identification, including the impacts of emerging technologies, the role of the State, the emergence of social networks, and online identity construction and management. Exchanges between students, scholars and professionals laid the foundation for future collaborative work, and the symposium closed with discussions of creating a new discipline of “digital identity studies.”
The papers featured here represent a small sample of the research presented over the course of the two-day symposium. Three of the four focus on the unique questions of identity posed by the rise of social networking sites and other social media. In her paper, danah boyd considers the role of “Friending” on MySpace and Friendster, describing the motivations behind Friending practices and the implications of Friendships. Ryan Bigge attempts to “make strange” the phenomenon of social networking in order to examine the potential negative implications of their increasing prevalence, including the costs of non-participation. Stacey Schesser tackles the admissibility of evidence obtained from user-generated online sources such as blogs, MySpace, and eBay.
The use and misuse of data collected by governments was also a central question for symposium participants, who presented case studies and analysis of data collection strategies from around the world. Veronica Pinero’s paper examines the concept of a “criminal record,” and its impact on the lives of convicted criminals after the completion of their sentences.
Read more here.
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