The Age of Context
The future needs to be contextual. Wait. Hasn't it always been necessary to be contextual? You are not going to get through a day successfully without examining the set of circumstances or facts that surround events and situations. So, why a new age of context?
Add to the discussion some other terms like "predictive technology" and "anticipatory software" and the new age might make more sense. Predictive technology uses learning algorithms and observed data to build behavioral models. It's not that we haven't already built human behavioral models. One problem with those models is that it usually requires information from the user, and that part of the data gathering process often yields inaccuracies. For example, you don't always tell the truth on those surveys.
One example of anticipatory software is Google Now. It is a kind of search where you don't search. Google Now looks at your digital life contextually. Some people get suspicious of Google looking in your email for keywords and at your calendar appointments for mentions of things like travel to other cities. But, by doing so, it builds "cards" that might be able to tell you the weather in that place you're going to this morning and that the flight is on time. That's useful, right?
I'm sure that some people will find this wonderfully amazing. And some will find it frightening in a privacy sense.
A quick search on Wikipedia also turns up contextual advertising (advertisements based on other content displayed, which Google, Facebook and others already use), contextual design (user-centered design), contextual inquiry (a related user-centered design method) and contextual learning (learning outside the classroom).
In this form of search, it is your behavior that creates predictive/anticipatory searches. I am sure that more of this type of data mining will occur, especially if it drives advertising revenue. I'm sure that Google is not alone in using this and expanding on these models
I saw a post last week that mentioned Robert Scoble calling this "the age of context." (He is writing a book on it along with Shel Israel.) I'm not sure we are entering an age of context quite yet. There are more and more context-based services and products, but contextualization is not mainstream yet.
If all this data probing frightens you from a privacy point of view, then maybe you need to consider the perspective of people like Jeff Jarvis. His book, Public Parts, has a subtitle that tells you his point of view: "How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live." Jarvis contends that "publicness" isn't really new and takes us back to earlier ages when innovations such as the camera and the printing press also created privacy fears. He is writing about the new industry that is based on sharing. Facebook, Twitter, Google (which he wrote about extensively in an earlier book
) and all the photo and status sharing applications certainly exploit our willingness to share.
Whether or not this publicness will ultimately lead to creative collaboration and change the way we think is yet to be determined. It is changing how we manufacture, market, buy and sell. That benefits some, but it would be more significant it it improved how we organize, govern, teach and learn.
Even observers like Jarvis recognize that understanding the limits of privacy is necessary to protecting it. If anticipatory and predictive technologies are going to be successful, then it will that users trust the system.
Will the day come when our devices will know us better than our friends? That is scary in a sci-fi kind of way. And like a lot of sci-fi, it just may come true.
Add to the discussion some other terms like "predictive technology" and "anticipatory software" and the new age might make more sense. Predictive technology uses learning algorithms and observed data to build behavioral models. It's not that we haven't already built human behavioral models. One problem with those models is that it usually requires information from the user, and that part of the data gathering process often yields inaccuracies. For example, you don't always tell the truth on those surveys.
One example of anticipatory software is Google Now. It is a kind of search where you don't search. Google Now looks at your digital life contextually. Some people get suspicious of Google looking in your email for keywords and at your calendar appointments for mentions of things like travel to other cities. But, by doing so, it builds "cards" that might be able to tell you the weather in that place you're going to this morning and that the flight is on time. That's useful, right?
I'm sure that some people will find this wonderfully amazing. And some will find it frightening in a privacy sense.
A quick search on Wikipedia also turns up contextual advertising (advertisements based on other content displayed, which Google, Facebook and others already use), contextual design (user-centered design), contextual inquiry (a related user-centered design method) and contextual learning (learning outside the classroom).
In this form of search, it is your behavior that creates predictive/anticipatory searches. I am sure that more of this type of data mining will occur, especially if it drives advertising revenue. I'm sure that Google is not alone in using this and expanding on these models
I saw a post last week that mentioned Robert Scoble calling this "the age of context." (He is writing a book on it along with Shel Israel.) I'm not sure we are entering an age of context quite yet. There are more and more context-based services and products, but contextualization is not mainstream yet.
If all this data probing frightens you from a privacy point of view, then maybe you need to consider the perspective of people like Jeff Jarvis. His book, Public Parts, has a subtitle that tells you his point of view: "How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live." Jarvis contends that "publicness" isn't really new and takes us back to earlier ages when innovations such as the camera and the printing press also created privacy fears. He is writing about the new industry that is based on sharing. Facebook, Twitter, Google (which he wrote about extensively in an earlier book
) and all the photo and status sharing applications certainly exploit our willingness to share.
Whether or not this publicness will ultimately lead to creative collaboration and change the way we think is yet to be determined. It is changing how we manufacture, market, buy and sell. That benefits some, but it would be more significant it it improved how we organize, govern, teach and learn.
Even observers like Jarvis recognize that understanding the limits of privacy is necessary to protecting it. If anticipatory and predictive technologies are going to be successful, then it will that users trust the system.
Will the day come when our devices will know us better than our friends? That is scary in a sci-fi kind of way. And like a lot of sci-fi, it just may come true.
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