Privacy, Identity, and Technology

该项目将调查新兴信息技术如何改变当代社会中的隐私和身份做法。它关注社会动态的三个核心问题：隐私和身份的实践如何变化，新的模式正在演变，以及技术和社会之间的关系如何发展？这项研究将通过民族志研究来解决这些问题，重点是两个新兴领域-“博客”和通过移动的技术进行的交流-在这两个领域中，围绕隐私和身份的新做法正在发展。本次调查的结果将提供设计师和政策制定者与理解的技术和实践在隐私和身份管理领域的相互演变的框架。信息技术是当代社会变革的一个关键因素，但我们对技术的理解，它的塑造，它的影响通常是分散的。从工程的角度来看，它被视为一种技术人工制品，并根据预定的目标进行衡量;从社会或文化的角度来看，它往往被视为一个“黑匣子”，很少考虑其性质和细节。本研究项目旨在解决这一平衡问题，将一个跨学科小组聚集在一起，研究信息技术与社会的关键联系-社会群体中的信息做法如何维持成员和信息流动的界限。第一，信息技术是社会和文化生产的场所。第二，技术重塑了先前的社会和权力结构。第三，“公”与“私”并不是严格的二分法。第四，隐私不应被视为纯粹的经济或信息方面，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，尤其是移动的网络系统的兴起。事实上，对信息隐私和安全的关注是国家和国际审议的主题。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，并为技术人员提供更深入地了解他们开发的系统中技术和社会之间的关系的工具。更直接的是，社会科学家和技术专家的跨学科伙伴关系是信息技术跨学科研究的发展计划的一部分，该计划不仅借鉴了工程学，而且还借鉴了社会科学，艺术和人文科学，以形成技术和日常生活的整体图景。通过将不同的观点聚集在一起，对一个明确的社会重要性的问题，这项研究将提供一种手段，整合研究生和本科教学跨越传统的学科界限，建立在现有的桥梁课程。

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.