We Omars, we’re loners, wanderers. Tropically depressed in a High-pressure world. I’ll be back soon enough…promise.

It’s common commuter habit to pull an untouched, unsoiled, newspaper from the interior of a newspaper stack, typically leaving a chafed & crusty copy for a gust of wind or a late-riser. This annotated edition, left on top, was passed up by a number of unimpressed commuters before I got my chance at it.

To what extent is the subversion of distribution infrastructure to disseminate “unofficial” communications an investment in that infrastructure, versus an attack on it’s intended function? In the same sense that we might interpret graffiti (or an any act of personalization for that matter) as a individual’s stake in a building/city/object’s survival, can we interpret these annotations as an acknowledgment of print media’s legitimacy even though the message directly challenges that media’s honesty? …an intertwining made more complicated by the author’s citations of stories contained within the paper in order substantiate his front-page editorial.

Which gets me thinking…
As news agencies continue co-opting social media facilities to enhance their online outlets, how have they missed the mark by focusing too much on commentary and discussion as supposed enabling reinterpretation and remixing? Are people only interested in having discussions around a news story? Or would they rather introduce their worldviews and biases into a news story? It’s an understandable selfishness…news agencies would rather package people into their product than let people re-package their product.

3rd party services like Reframe It offer browser plug-ins that enable the annotation of websites. But these are just surface annotations; they’re just blog-style comments with some additional spatial/textual information. The primary work isn’t actually “reframed” because you’re not forced to read the comments first. The original material still frames the comments, not vice versa. In the case of my marked-up amNY, I coudn’t not read the writing first; it’s implicitly disruptive. The article references/hyperlinks pulled those respective articles into a new context/story. And I was forced to acknowledge the paper’s previous reader before any of the articles’ authors, and it felt like I was genuinely sharing a newspaper with someone – it felt genuinely “social”.

It’s been a few weeks since Usain Bolt’s celebratory 9.69 second jog, the Olympics are well and done, but I still find myself fascinated by the he’s-either-on-steroids-or-everything-we-thought-we-knew-about-sprinting-is-wrong 100m world record. I catch myself watching the final once or twice a day (I have the video on my phone); it probably won’t cease to amaze me until he finds a tenth of a second in his busy schedule to surpass it.

I, like the large majority of Americans, did not get to watch Bolt’s run live that Saturday morning as exclusive television rights kept major competitions off the air until NBC’s nightly primetime broadcast. That’s not to say I waited until 9pm; I waited about 15 minutes.

[view full size]

As far as I could gather at the time (and I really wish I had a better way to capture the data), the first YouTube video of Bolt’s record breaker was uploaded at 10:37:02am EST (-5:00), about 6 minutes and 52.31 seconds after the race ended.

<entry>
<id>http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/OL0uEG6Ztjk</id>
<published>2008-08-16T07:37:02.000-07:00</published>
…

The publisher (young, British, impressive selection of homemade wedgie videos) made the interesting choice to avoid the inevitable copyright takedown by hiding the picture – it’s still up, just audio. [UPDATE: Alas, our young lad's account seems to have been suspended due to a terms of use violation, so the video is gone.] 5 minutes later the first actual video appeared, and as expected it was gone shortly thereafter.

<entry>
<id>http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/WYXUWFqj1s0</id>
<published>2008-08-16T07:41:52.000-07:00</published>
…

From that point on, a video of the 100m final appeared on YouTube about every 90 seconds for the next half hour or so; with takedown notices issued just as fast. While many point to illegal downloads as a measure of demand for a copyrighted digital product, what does the quantity of uploads indicate? And particularly, in the case of uploading a recording of a live event, what does the immediacy of the uploads indicate? Knowing well that the lifespan of their videos won’t exceed 15 minutes, what motivates the uploaders? Is it social media status, public service, ideological battle against copyright, just a play for view counts or simply content spam?

Regardless, it was impressive to watch the videos pour in – a sort of crowd-sourced live blog in the form of YouTube search results. And while the large majority of the videos were just recordings of television broadcasts, a few were actually recorded frist-hand by attendees.

As user proficiency of social media sites increases, there’s an increasing number of online services through which events and experiences are documented in near real-time – and increasingly via mobile devices. Between YouTube, flickr and twitter, some sort of digg spy-esque real-time aggregation of that almost-real-time user generated content might be pretty interesting.

This image of a so-called “Wii Spray” device, thesis project of a one Martin Lihs, has been making appearances on design and tech blogs lately. Discussion of the prototype has so far focused on heightened realism the controller would bring to a street-art videogame. Personally, I’m partial to the rainbow cable – but that might just be me. Aesthetics of cordage aside, what I find most intriguing about the device isn’t it’s application as a gaming interface but the potential to repurpose it as a recording device. TiVo for graffiti, as it were. So lets put our Johnny Chung Lee hats on for a moment and think this through…

As far as I can gather, all Martin Lihs has purportedly done is cram the contents of a Wiimote into a model spray can. But what if it were real? Could we record the strokes (sprays?) of a graf artist tagging a wall? Pentop Computers for tag crews. Due to the range of motion necessary for painting and the inherent directionality of the Wiimote’s infrared camera, I don’t think tracking would be possible using Lihs’ setup since it’s unlikely the camera would always be pointed at the IR LEDs (Wii Sensor Bar) mounted on the wall. However, if the LEDs were attached to the can and instead the camera were mounted to the wall, keeping the LEDs in sight is no longer dependent on the orientation of the spray can. Connect the LEDs to a switch so they’re only lit when the tip is depressed and you’re more or less good to go. You’d still need a way to distinguish colors and I’m not entirely sure if one camera is enough, but the point is it’s doable at relatively little cost – I think.

Assuming there existed this system that could record the painting process and produce a perfect vector representation of a graffiti artist’s work, would anyone use it? Most of you are probably familiar with the Graffiti Research Labs’ L.A.S.E.R. Tag which exchanges permanence for legality and extreme scale. That seems to be fairly popular. But in this case would the ability to digitally playback, map and archive a painting be enough to counter the replicability and de-localization of the work? Or are those qualities too critical to graffiti’s inherent purpose? Obviously, if every spray were instantly geo-tagged and uploaded to something like Graffiti Archaeology prosecution would become a whole lot easier, but it’d be quite cool to remotely & virtually watch these artists work.

That’s how the 7th season of American Idol ended for a handful of viewers who watched the finale recorded on their DVRs. The live broadcast, which extended a couple minutes beyond the scheduled end time, was cut off right as host Ryan Seacrest went to announce which David (Cook or Archuleta) had won this year’s competition. Brilliant.

When limited by a scarcity of storage resources, what parameters dictate what will and won’t be recorded? An assumption as to the temporal certainty of an event’s occurrence lead those who hadn’t accounted for any margin of error to miss the mark. And seeing how it was the television network, the thing being recorded, that supplied the erroneous information, we’re reminded yet again that distributing misinformation is an extremely effective means of resisting surveillance.

Which begs a few questions: First, in a future of truly pervasive and distributed computing, is it useful to extend the notion sousveillance to include all surveillance facilitated by information supplied by the entity being observed? And more importantly, did Fox intentionally let the broadcast run long to teach time-shifting freeloaders a lesson?

Looking at a demo of the Path Inelligence UI, I’m reminded of the heatmaps videogame developer Bungie produces with data gathered from online play of Halo 3. The heatmaps, which visualize the locations of kills and deaths by specific weapon types, are used by level designers to ensure playing fields are well balanced and kills are evenly distributed across the terrain (Does a map bias a certain weapon type? Does map asymmetry give one team an advantage?). What’s more interesting is that Bungie produces a heatmap of every players’ indivdual kills and deaths, and that data has proven to be an excellent strategic resource more serious competitors (Am I more accurate with the sniper rifle when firing from the tower or up on the hill? Should I be using the shotgun or rifle in narrow corridors?). But I digress…

[Sniper Rifle kills on Last Resort]

In his post, Greenfield presents two concerns with Path Intelligence:

In this case, information gathered from you without your knowledge (let alone your consent) is being used to build models of behavior from which real financial value can be derived. Do you participate in enjoyment of that value? You do not. […]

That’s only one of my concerns, and at that, probably the less important one. The other and greater is that given enough data, these traces can be tied to individuals with relative ease.

Whenever the issue of location tracking and privacy comes up, I always find myself retelling the story of being falsely accused of fare evasion by a plain-clothed police officer who’d been staking out the entrance to the 34th St subway station. After being handed a fairly heft fine, it didn’t take much effort to call the MTA and request a log of my Metrocard usage, which showed that my card had indeed been swiped at the station seconds before the ticket was issued. A loose argument, but enough of a hassle to keep the officer from pursuing the charge any further. And amazingly, the entire ordeal was handled through post. That was in 2000…8 years ago.

What both the Halo 3 heatmaps and Metrocard logs have in common is that in order for them to be of substantial value to players/commuters, they need to be directly tied to an identity. However, in the case of FootPath, privacy concerns such as Greenfield’s are what drive Path Intelligence to take every measure in ensuring the collected data can’t be associated back to a an individual. According to their privacy policy:

In developing FootPath™ we have ensured that you cannot, at any time, be personally identified as a result of your travel through premises in which FootPath™ operates.

FootPath™ receives only a regularly changing, random number which contains no personal information. As we do not access this information in real time, or divulge this information to any third parties, it is not practicably possible for you to be indentified by the operation of FootPath™.

However, it’s that anonymity that will prevent us from discovering the value of that data when a situation for its use presents itself. Though it was by no means a surprise, I had never considered whether or not the MTA tracked my use of the subway system until I found myself thinking “if only there were an easy way to prove I had swiped my Metrocard at 8:35am”. Now granted, that’s an edge case; but the point is that just because we can’t presently think of any consumer uses for Path Intelligence’s tracking doesn’t mean we won’t someday find it extremely valuable (for now they should think about offering shoppers free food in exchange for the marketing data, a la the ad-supported coffee shop).

I don’t mean to imply privacy shouldn’t be a concern. We’re transitioning into a technological era where even our passive interactions with spaces and institutions will be geotagged and recorded without our knowledge. That’s a bit scary. So, if I’ve got to choose a side, I’m backing the privacy activists on this one. It’s not long before this technology is extended to track more granular activities. How soon before stores consider recording which products I pick up off the shelf but decline to purchase? While it’s easy to argue online stores like Amazon are already effectively doing this (jus virtually), it’s important to remember I can turn off my computer if I feel annoyed or threatened. On the other hand, I can’t exactly turn off reality.

Similar to the Phorm/BT partnership, Charter Communications, the fourth-largest cable operator in the US, announced this week that they’ll be tracking every site their customers visit and selling that data to ad-placement company NebuAd. What I think people find so objectionable with Phorm and NebuAd is they don’t seem to be offering anything of much value back to the consumer. If they were somehow enabling free/cheaper internet access (a la NetZero of the late-90s) or offering any sort of service of value that’s not strictly ad related, it might be a completely different story. But all they seem to be doing is introducing a privacy risk for what will most likely amount to a negligible increase in advertising relevance.

Anyhow, more interestingly, it’s time for me to ask my favorite question: What changes once a handful of ISPs begin tracking everything people look at online, when everything is recorded? The first behavioral response to Phorm’s technology has appeared in the form of software called AntiPhormLite…

AntiPhormLite runs independently and silently in the background of your PC. It connects to the web and intelligently simulates natural surfing behavior across thousands of customizable topics. This creates a background noise of false information disguising and inverting your own interests.

I touched on this idea before and what it boils down to is: When everything is recorded, privacy is accomplished by distributing misinformation, as supposed to withholding sensitive information. In other words, if you can’t prevent information from entering the system, just flood it with noise. That’s all well and good in an anti-advertising context, but when we step back and consider the system we’re talking about is a maturing communications network (the Internet), such practices can be extremely unhealthy.

Because what happens if the same technique is employed as a privacy solution in social contexts? The promise of many social web services is the possibility of getting to know new and interesting people. As a result, users are in a continual three-way balancing act: How do they maintain their privacy and share personally interesting information with friends, all while remaining accessible to acquaintances and strangers not yet part of their inner social network? What happens when a twitter user, with a desire to keep their tweets public, is forced to lie to achieve short-term privacy? How does that impact twitter’s credibility as a communications platform? (I wonder what percentage of tweets are in fact lies or of questionable truthiness? Any guesses?) What happens when it’s easier for a user of a location-based social network to lie about their location than continually fiddle with privacy settings? Are these life-casting applications sustainable when users have no clear sense as to the level of trust they should expect from and invest in these services?

Obviously I’m being overly alarmist here, but I think it’s sometimes worth thinking about such questions with some amount of despondency.