Privacy, Identity, and Technology

这个项目将调查在其中新的和新兴的信息技术正在改变隐私和身份的做法在当代社会的方式。它关注的是社会动力学的三个核心问题：隐私和身份的实践是如何变化的，什么新的模式正在演变，以及技术和社会之间的关系是如何发展的？这项研究将通过关注两个新兴领域的人种学研究来解决这些问题——“博客”和通过移动技术进行通信——在这两个领域，围绕隐私和身份的新做法正在发展。这项调查的结果将为设计师和政策制定者提供一个框架，以了解隐私和身份管理领域的技术和实践的相互演变。信息技术是当代社会变革的关键因素，然而我们对技术的理解、技术的形成及其影响通常是分散的。从工程的角度来看，IT是作为技术工件来研究的，并根据预定的目标进行测量；从社会或文化的角度来看，它通常被视为一个“黑盒子”，很少考虑它的性质和细节。本研究项目旨在解决这一平衡问题，通过召集一个跨学科小组来研究信息技术与社会的关键联系-社会群体中的信息实践如何维持成员和信息流的界限。这个项目的智力方法基于五个基本原则。第一，信息技术是社会和文化生产的场所。第二，技术重新定义了先前的社会和权力结构。第三，“公共”和“私人”并不是严格的两分法。第四，隐私不应被视为纯粹的经济或信息方面的问题，而应被视为集体信息实践。第五，信息实践是身份工作的一种手段。信息技术对日常生活的日益殖民化对整个社会产生了重大影响，对于移动网络系统的兴起尤其如此。事实上，对信息隐私和安全的担忧是国家和国际讨论的话题。这项研究将为个人和政策制定者提供解决这些问题的工具，并为技术人员提供对他们开发的系统中技术和社会之间关系的更深层次的理解。更直接地说，社会科学家和技术专家的这种跨学科合作关系是信息技术跨学科研究发展计划的一部分，该计划不仅利用工程学，还利用社会科学、艺术和人文科学，以形成技术和日常生活的整体图景。通过对具有明显社会重要性的问题汇集不同的观点，这项研究将提供一种方法，使研究生和本科生的教学跨越传统的学科界限，在现有课程的基础上进行整合。

This project will investigate the ways in which new and emerging information technologies are transforming the practices of privacy and identity in contemporary society. It is concerned with three core questions of social dynamics: How are practices of privacy and identity changing, what new patterns are evolving, and how is the relationship between technical and social being developed? The research will address these questions through ethnographic studies focused on two emerging areas - "blogging" and communication through mobile technologies - in which new practices surrounding privacy and identity are being developed. The results of this investigation will provide designers and policy-makers with a framework for understanding the mutual evolution of technology and practice in the areas of privacy and identity management.Information technology is a key agent of change in contemporary society, and yet our understandings of technology, its shaping, and its impacts are typically fragmented. From an engineering perspective, IT is studied as a technological artifact and measured against predetermined goals; from a social or cultural perspective, it is often treated as a "black box" with little consideration of its nature and detail. This research project aims to address this balance, by bringing together an interdisciplinary group to study a critical nexus of information technology and society - the ways in which information practices in social groups serve to maintain boundaries of membership and information flow.The intellectual approach of this project is based on five fundamental principles. The first is that information technology is a site of social and cultural production. The second is that technology reinscribes prior social and power structures. The third is that "public" and "private" are not rigidly dichotomous. The fourth is that rather than being seen in purely economic or informational terms, privacy should be approached as collective information practice. The fifth is that information practices are a means of identity work.The increasing colonization of everyday life by information technology has major implications for society at large, and this is particularly true for the rise of mobile networked systems. Indeed, concerns over information privacy and security are topics of national and international deliberation. This research will provide individuals and policy-makers with tools to tackle these problems, and technologists with a deeper understanding of the relationship between technical and social in the systems that they develop. More immediately, this interdisciplinary partnership of social scientists and technologists is part of a developing program in interdisciplinary studies of information technology which draw not only on engineering but also on social science, arts, and humanities in order to form a holistic picture of technology and everyday life. By bringing different perspectives together on a problem of clear societal importance, this research will provide a means to integrate both graduate and undergraduate teaching across traditional disciplinary boundaries, building on existing bridges within curricula.