Doctoral Dissertation Research: Privacy on the Roads: Values, Technical Design and the Flow of Personal Information on the Transportation and Information Superhighways

博士论文研究：道路隐私：交通和信息高速公路上的价值观、技术设计和个人信息流动

• 批准号: 0620772
• 负责人: Helen Nissenbaum
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: New York University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-09-01 至 2007-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0620772&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Privacy; Roads

This Science and Society Dissertation Improvement grant requests support for empirical data collection to investigate the value implications of two emerging technologies of everyday life, networked vehicle systems and web search engines. Networked vehicle systems (GPS-based navigational tools, automated toll collection, automobile black boxes, and vehicle safety communication systems) rely on the transmission, collection and aggregation of a particular vehicle's location and telemetry data. The drive towards the perfect web search engine (providing personalized results and delivering only relevant advertising) depends on the profiling of users' online activities and interests. Taken together, these technologies represent emerging threats to one's privacy on the roads: on the one hand, networked vehicle systems enable the widespread surveillance of drivers traveling on the public highways, and on the other, a perfect search engine facilitates the monitoring and aggregation of one's intellectual activities on the information superhighway. NSF funding is requested for travel to three carefully selected, specialized research sites that will make theoretical, material, and pragmatic contributions to this project: Center for Philosophy of Technology and Engineering Science, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands, to enrich the investigation of the relationship between values and technology, and work alongside both philosophers and engineers sensitive to the value implications of technology; Department of Philosophy and the History of Technology, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, to work alongside other scholars dedicated to the ethics of traffic technology and observe pragmatic interventions within Swedish automotive and technical communities; and Culturally Embedded Computing Group, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, to gain a critical understanding of the relationship between technology and culture, and witness the application of critical technical practice to real design situations. Studying within these communities of scholars, in person and over an extended period of time, will not only directly inform this project's investigation of the value implications of technology, but also broaden the level of inquiry to include unique interdisciplinary and pragmatic dimensions typically separated by geographic and disciplinary boundaries and not immediately available at New York University. The intellectual merit of this project includes the deepening of the knowledge and understanding of the complex interplay between social, moral, political and cultural values and technology. Specifically, it will elucidate the value implications of two emerging sociotechnical systems as they relate to privacy in public and the privacy of one's intellectual activities. The support requested with this proposal will improve the project's rigor and intellectual merit by enabling the sharing and discussion of the theories, methods and results of contemporaneous projects with leading scholars at relevant research sites worldwide. The broader impact of this project includes bringing philosophical, legal and cultural analyses of technology into real-world design contexts with the goal of influencing technical design in value- conscious ways. Using the pragmatic tools of value-sensitive design and critical technical practice, combined with the knowledge gained by visiting sites of successful collaboration among social scientists, philosophers and engineers, this project will engage with technical communities to proactively inform design, and work generally to provide a new model for pragmatic engagement outside academia.

这项科学和社会论文改进拨款要求支持经验数据收集，以调查日常生活中两项新兴技术--联网车辆系统和网络搜索引擎--的价值含义。联网车辆系统(基于GPS的导航工具、自动收费、汽车黑匣子和车辆安全通信系统)依赖于特定车辆位置和遥测数据的传输、收集和聚合。实现完美的网络搜索引擎(提供个性化搜索结果，只投放相关广告)取决于对用户在线活动和兴趣的描述。综上所述，这些技术代表着道路上对个人隐私的新威胁：一方面，联网的车辆系统使人们能够对在公共高速公路上行驶的司机进行广泛的监控，另一方面，完美的搜索引擎促进了对一个人在信息高速公路上的智力活动的监控和聚合。NSF申请资金用于前往三个精心挑选的专门研究地点，这三个地点将为该项目做出理论、材料和实用贡献：荷兰恩斯赫德特温特大学技术哲学和工程科学中心，以丰富对价值和技术之间关系的调查，并与敏感于技术价值影响的哲学家和工程师合作；瑞典斯德哥尔摩皇家技术学院哲学和技术史系，与致力于交通技术伦理的其他学者合作，观察瑞典汽车和技术界的务实干预；与纽约伊萨卡康奈尔大学的文化嵌入计算组合作，以获得对技术与文化之间关系的批判性理解，并见证关键技术实践在实际设计情景中的应用。在这些学者社区内进行面对面和较长时间的研究，不仅将直接为该项目对技术的价值影响的调查提供信息，还将扩大调查的水平，包括通常由地理和学科边界分隔的独特的跨学科和实用维度，而纽约大学不会立即提供这些维度。该项目的学术价值包括加深对社会、道德、政治和文化价值观与技术之间复杂相互作用的认识和理解。具体地说，它将阐明两个新出现的社会技术系统的价值含义，因为它们与公共隐私和一个人的智力活动的隐私有关。这项建议所要求的支持将通过与世界各地相关研究地点的主要学者分享和讨论同期项目的理论、方法和结果来提高项目的严谨性和智力价值。该项目的更广泛影响包括将对技术的哲学、法律和文化分析带入现实世界的设计背景，目的是以有价值的方式影响技术设计。利用注重价值的设计和关键技术实践的实用工具，结合访问社会科学家、哲学家和工程师成功合作的网站所获得的知识，该项目将与技术社区接触，主动为设计提供信息，并总体上努力为学术界以外的务实参与提供新的模式。