Michael Zimmer.org

On Wednesday, July 21, 2010, I will be presenting in front of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP), part of the Office for Human Research Protections in the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). My presentation will focus on how Web 2.0 tools, environments, and experiences are creating new conceptual gaps in our understanding of privacy, anonymity/identifiability, consent, and harm.

When I edited a special volume of First Monday on “Critical Perspectives of Web 2.0” I was lucky to have included a contribution by Trebor Scholz, which made an already good collection of papers even better. Scholz’s article, “Market Ideology and the Myths of Web 2.0“, argued that the very notion of “Web 2.0″ represents not a unique socio–technological advance in the World Wide Web, but rather a powerful “framing device of professional elites that define what enters the public discourse about the impact of the Web on society,” resulting …

Congratulations to Elizabeth Buchanan and Charles Ess for being awarded an NSF grant to create a much-needed repository and advisory board to address the challenges that emerging Internet and Web 2.0 platforms are placing on research ethics.
I’m thrilled to be among the senior personnel on this grant, and look forward to the collaboration and results.
[Note: The Internet Research Ethics Digital Library, Resource Center, and Commons website is now live]
Here is the summary of the research project:

Internet Research and Ethics 2.0:
The Internet Research Ethics Digital Library, Interactive Resource Center, and Online …

Geert Lovink, one of the premier theorists of new media and network culture, has posted a set of “Web 2.0 Theses,” puncturing the ethos and mythology the surrounds Web 2.0 and contemporary internet fetishism.
Here’s my quick summary, but I encourage you to read the full text:
0. The internet turns out to be neither the problem nor the solution for the global recession.
1. Web 2.0 applications and platforms remain ‘new’ but show a tendency to get lost inside the boring, stressful and uncertain working life of the connected billions.
2. Social …

A few months ago I contributed to a news article about businesses increasingly participating in social media platforms for marketing and management of customer relations.
Seems the recording industry behemoth Universal Music Group was listening, as they’ve recently joined the multimedia blogging platform Tumblr. Problem is, they don’t seem to know what they’re doing (and are still in the process of hiring someone to “Participate in online social networking environments and develop viral marketing campaigns”).
Countless users are cringing at the notion that UMG is now participating in this social environment and …

I’ve written a lot here about the need for companies to engage in value-conscious design of their products and services. This, admittedly, is no simple task. Ever since spending a few weeks thinking about this topic a few years ago, my colleague Noëmi Manders-Huits and I have been organizing our thoughts on the pragmatic challenges of bringing ethics and values into the design & boardrooms.
The result of our efforts has just been published in a special issue of the International Review of Information Ethics focusing on the convergence between business …

There’s nothing worse than listening to yourself talk.
Following up on March’s special issue of First Monday on “Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0,” I was recently interviewed by Joy Austria and A.J. Hannah for the First Monday Podcast series.
You can download the MP3 (5.2MB, 15:16) or read the transcript. Hopefully you can read between the awkward phrasing of my responses (I think I was travel-weary at the time), and find something insightful to complement the special issue.
(Speaking of that special issue, the Washington Post recently quoted Anders Albrechtslund‘s contribution. I’m …

I am pleased to announce the (open) publication of a special issue of First Monday on “Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0.”
This special issue was born from a panel I organized at AoIR, and features amazing contributions from Trebor Scholz, Matthew Allen, Kylie Jarrett, Søren Mørk Petersen, myself, Anders Albrechtslund, and David Silver.
My thanks to everyone who helped make this special issue a reality.
First Monday
Volume 13, Number 3 – 3 March 2008
Special issue: Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0
edited by Michael Zimmer
Preface: Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0
by Michael Zimmer
Market Ideology and …

Speaking of my colleague Noëmi Manders-Huits, she is organizing an amazing looking conference on Ethics, Technology and Identity in Delft this June:
Information technology plays an increasingly important role in society and in human lives. Identity Management Technologies (e.g. biometrics, profiling, surveillance), in combination with a variety of identification procedures and personalized services are ubiquitous and pervasive. This calls for careful consideration and design of collecting, mining, storing and use of personal information.
Access, rights, responsibilities, benefits, burdens and risks are apportioned on the basis of identities of individuals. These identities are …

Just a friendly reminder that the Reputation Economies in Cyberspace symposium hosted by the Yale Information Society Project is coming up (my original post on the symposium is here). It is being held on December 8, 2007 at Yale Law School in New Haven , CT.
Spots are still available, but filling up quickly. You can register here, and we’ve added a new discounted student registration fee of $45.
I hope to see many of you there!

Blogging has been light due to other duties, but I wanted to point out a few notable items that deserve attention:

 Twitter appears to be planning to expand the search offerings, allowing users to search for particular terms within others’ real-time personal data streams. If implemented, one’s Twitter messages will no longer be practically obscured from most people’s eyes (only a few people really other to view your stream, trust me). Instead, access to your stream is only a search term away.
Philipp Lenssen posted a nice piece of satire about how …

The Information Society Project at Yale Law School is proud to present Reputation Economies in Cyberspace. The symposium will be held on December 8, 2007 at Yale Law School in New Haven , CT.
This event will bring together representatives from industry, government, and academia to explore themes in online reputation, community-mediated information production, and their implications for democracy and innovation. The symposium is made possible by the generous support of the Microsoft Corporation.
A distinguished group of experts will map out the terrain of reputation economies in four panels: (1) …

Following up on my Web 2.0 panel at 4S, I just returned from another quick trip to Canada — this time Vancouver — for the annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers, where I organized a similar panel titled “Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0: Surveillance, Discipline, Labor.” I again had the pleasure of presenting alongside Anders Albrechtslund, Søren Mørk Petersen, along with Kylie Jarrett, and my former NYU collegaue, Bilge Yesil. We were lucky to have David Silver perform the duties of respondent, and he posted his valuable insights …

I am currently attending the annual meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science in Montreal. Earlier today I had the pleasure of participating on a panel I co-organized with Anders Albrechtslund titled, “Ways Knowing Everything About Each Other: Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0 and Social Networking.”
Here are the first few paragraphs of my contribution:
Privacy and Surveillance in Web 2.0:
A study in Contextual Integrity, and the Emergence of “Netaveillance”
This talk is an attempt to collect and organize some thoughts on how the rise of so-called Web 2.0 technologies bear …

William McGeveran, a professor at University of Minnesota Law School, points to this troubling story about a Florida State professor who made each student read aloud his/her Facebook profie, which noted how “the girls [sic] whose hobby was “being slutty” was particularly embarrassed…”
A similar thing happened during a public event showcasing the final projects for class I taught a few years ago. One student’s project was to assess to privacy implications of social networking sites, so he printed out the Facebook page of each student in the class and distributed …