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17 Responses to “The emerging issues and their impact - a preliminary assessment”

1. William Heath Says:
   June 26th, 2007 at 1:40 pm

   Hey Tom - how can you give generation C zero? We’re doing this for people, right? Now that we have the internet, do people becave differently? Well yes, with social networking, texting, flash mobbing etc. Surely kids today behave in some measurably different ways from our (earlier) generation in away that is a product of the technology.

   So when we look at the impact of emerging technologies are we really going to say “impact on people as they were”? Or do we open up our minds to people as they are now emerging, which is what I think i smeant by Generation C?

2. Tom Fuller Says:
   June 26th, 2007 at 8:02 pm

   In response to William, I confess to a prejudice formed by the precept ‘once burned, twice shy.’ I was in San Francisco in 1968 (or so I’m reliably informed) and that generation of young people were going to be radically different, informed by different media and better drugs (or so I’m reliably informed). Or maybe I should say twice burned, thrice shy. I thought the Internet would change people back in 1993. Still waiting.

   You say people are behaving differently. I predict 50 years from now an anthropologist will marvel at how the youth of today instantly adapted new tools to replicate old behaviours. Okay, colour me cynical–or cyclical.

3. Sam Says:
   June 26th, 2007 at 10:23 pm

   there appears to be little/no distinction between potentials when things go wrong. If e-voting corrupts an election, then there are relatively easy ways to reverse that (detection being a slight obstacle). While that may be a significant to the person who is cheated and loses, it’s relatively limited for everyone else. E-voting is only a process.

   If the someone’s biometrics get publicly released, that’s a immediate and complete invalidation of those biometrics for ever or until they chop the ends of their fingers off. That affects the system of using biometrics as ID itself.

   If there’s a data breach of X,000 records names/addresses from 10 years ago, then there’s a reasonably good chance the vast majority of them will be useless and there’s only impact to those individuals who are still accurate. It doesn’t affect anything beyond those individuals.

   I think you might need to add a fourth category for those which have societal impacts rather than purely individual level impacts.

4. Tom Fuller Says:
   June 27th, 2007 at 6:19 am

   Hi Sam,

   Thanks for the comment. I actually thought hard about e-Voting before assigning it a high impact level. What swayed me was the American experience in Florida, where the logic of re-running the election (and I know the disputed ballots were cast manually, not electronically) was over-ridden by emotion and politics. Calls for invalidating any particular election will never be supported by the winning side.

5. Ian Brown Says:
   June 27th, 2007 at 8:43 am

   Right, Tom. It’s highly unlikely that the losing parties could convince a court to order a new election (see ORG’s report on the May elections for how difficult parties already find it). Isn’t changing the outcome of a national election one of the most significant societal impacts you could hope for?

6. William Heath Says:
   June 27th, 2007 at 9:40 am

   I agree about the distinction between impact on the individual and impact on society. People argue for large central databases on the basis they serve a utilitarian overall purpose. Others object to them, sometimes passionately, as they envisgae how Kafkaesque it will be when they go wrong and we’re on the receiving end. I think think who respect the dignity of the individual take consequences on the individual very seriously. People who look at spreadsheets and make up clever theories about society in general argue on the basis of some “big picture”. You cant reflect this in a simple numberical “impact”

7. Matthew Phelan Says:
   June 27th, 2007 at 10:22 am

   I really think the key issue here will be the changing media and how it impacts the way in which populations form opinion. In the past we have had situations of redtop news papers swaying general elections (especially 1997 and also 1992). I think within the next 10 years we will be seeing stories of some new social network site having a similar influence.

   My main point is that the threat will come when individuals or organisations with the biggest check books utilise these vast networks to influence opinion. I have no idea how this would occur but I can see it as a major threat.

8. Tom Fuller Says:
   June 27th, 2007 at 12:49 pm

   I think Matthew is onto something about social networking sites. At present they are aggregators. When natural affinities develop, they will ipso facto present political groupings/pressure groups. When Facebooks starts issuing opinions, people will start to listen. Of course, it probably won’t be Facebook but some new version of a social network. But advertisers are already putting ads into massive online multiplayer games and measuring impact by how long players pause in front of them. Those ads could easily be political messages, or an effigy of a politician that the player could either ‘knight’ or behead.

9. Alex Says:
   June 27th, 2007 at 2:11 pm

   Couple of comments

   In all this what about the people who do not have access to a computer. Should we be writing about them or are they the placebo who live life untouched ?

   Also I am not sure if there are emerging technologies in life sciences that mean artificial intelligence, or chips will be embedded in us. Perhaps a medic could assess the list for completeness ?

10. Andy Phippen Says:
    June 27th, 2007 at 4:20 pm

    I would certainly share some of Sam’s feelings - I must admit when I first saw the list I did think “its a bit techie for the sake of it isn’t it?”. Although when digging deeper I did see the method behind things though! But I do think its not the technology per se, but the abuse of it, that has the most significant impact. For example, the Semantic Web, if abused (if it ever gets going in the first place!), could have potentially horrific privacy implications, when machines are making decisions regarding “your” relationships, etc. And the Google Maps API - on its own a very worthy (and useful) thing, mixed up with sex offenders records in the US (such as the Georgia sex offenders website), and you’ve got a wonderfully inciteful technology for vigilantisim. Isn’t a key issue that technologists need to be thinking about not just the direct implementation requirements, but what happens when society take it off in unpredicable directions (SMS is the obvious one there). Should there be a greater ethical expectation and responsibility among technologist? And is this something the Government could help with?

    And as a parting shot, I completely agree that the C-generation are an area of massive concern. In my experience, they are incredibly technically savvy in the use of ICTs, but have zero awareness of threats, damage or abuse that may result from the technologies they are using.

11. William Heath Says:
    June 27th, 2007 at 8:26 pm

    Stefan writes:

    >Convergence 3

    Perhaps a clarification is in order …

    > Rampancy: AI gone wrong 3

    Perhaps add “data mining”

    > - *Nano- 3

    Nonarobotics, yes!

    > APIs

    Why?

    > Ultraportable devices 2

    Perhaps add “converting personal devices into computing devices” or something along those lines

    > Bad sysadmin procedures 2

    Along these lines I would add:

    - Bad IT procurement processes (by government)

    > Public sector databases on children 2

    on anyone …

    > Keyloggers 2

    Viruses etc.

    > Quantum Computing 2

    I’d give this a 1 at best, it’s vastly over-hyped. Personally, I’d remove it from the list

12. William Heath Says:
    June 27th, 2007 at 8:29 pm

    …and Douwe writes…
    

    an excellent initiative - i enjoyed a quick browse. if i find the time, i’ll try to come up with wider comments. for now just one and a half:

    human rights isnt really a separate issue: many of the issues you list are directly human rights issues: from being tracked by CCTV cameras through childrens databases to e-voting, etc. i feel that making human rights a separate category actually undermines some of the overall effect.
    better (i think) to say that “many, if not all, of the issues listed directly affect nationally and internationally protected human rights, such as the right to freedom from undue surveillance, freedom from arbitrary arrest, the right to a fair trial, non-discrimination, childrens rights, voting rights, etc. etc.”

13. Matthew Phelan Says:
    June 28th, 2007 at 2:49 pm

    Some very interesting points from Andy Phippen especially in regards to vigilantism.

    However, remarks that the C-Generation has “zero awareness of threats, damage or abuse that may result from the technologies they are using” are way off mark in terms of the C-Generation I have known and mentored.

    In the words of the WHO “they’re alright. The kids are alright”

    Communicating with the C-Generation on platforms that they understand is essential but I think Tom was correct with his first assumption.

14. Tom Fuller Says:
    June 28th, 2007 at 3:07 pm

    Robin contributes this regarding Identity Management:

    It’s notable that these issues relate to various aspects of enforcement
    (entitlement to services or welfare, establishing tax liability, criminal evidence, and so on). However, this represents only one possible
    perspective on (citizen) identity data: the converse perspective, from
    the citizen’s point of view, is characterised by two things:

    1 - for non-discretionary “transactions” such as the law enforcement
    ones above, how are the possible side-effects of compulsory data-sharing mitigated, technically and non-technically?

    2 - for discretionary transactions (’joined-up government’ service
    provision) how is the user’s consent established, protected, managed and revoked?

15. Matthew Phelan Says:
    June 29th, 2007 at 3:42 pm

    Below is an email conversation between Andy Phippen and my self regarding the subject of Generation C

    ——————————————————————————–

    From: Andy Phippen
    Sent: 29 June 2007 10:49
    To: Matthew Phelan
    Subject: Blindside posts

    Hi Matthew

    I thought I’d drop you a line about your comments to my comments on the Blindside on Tom’s top 23 topic. I thought I’d mail rather than post another comment because its a bit off topic.

    I’m very interested in your comment about kids - especially regarding their awareness, as certainly in the dialogue we’ve had with schoolkids over the past year or so, the vast majority have little to no awareness of the potential problems using messanger (sp?) and social networking sites might have regarding stalking, issues of identity and future “life caching”! I’d be interested to hear about those you have mentored, and whether they share similar demography.

    Best regards

    Andy

    ——————————————————————————–

    Hi Andy,

    Nice to hear from you.

    My opinions were formed from final year GCSE students that I have mentored over the last 2 years (A comprehensive school in Colchester) and lads aged 16-19 that I play football with.

    The GCSE students are academically limited and predicted grades of E-D. The guys I know through football are academically a mixed bunch and spent a lot of their younger years concentrating on making it at clubs like Norwich, Ipswich and Colchester rather than being interested in education.

    I made my comments due to the knowledge these guys have and all the information they pass on to me.

    A few examples include;

    I changed the date of birth on my yahoo account as this allowed hackers to easily access my email

    I never state on Facebook that I am out of the house on a particular date because my IP address can give away my real address via 192.com

    I never use my correct DOB on any networking site

    I never email my bank details

    I hope this helps and by the way it sounds like a really interesting subject.

    All the best

    Matt

16. Andy Phippen Says:
    July 1st, 2007 at 7:36 pm

    Just following up “in public” from my chat with Matt, I find this fascinating. We’ve spent a fair amount of time with around 100 kids in the SW, and find on the whole they have only the thinnest veneer of Internet awareness. While a few mentioned things like appreciating that the picture of their “friend” from MySpace might not be accurate and similar, there wasn’t hardly any depth beyond a few basic techniques.

    Most worryingly was listening to at least three separate cases where girls around 14 years old told similar stories of how someone unknown to them started chatting to them on MSN, and then started to ask to meet up. All believed they were of similar age and gender (”thats what they said”) and while none ever got to meeting up, the strongest form of protection was blocking them on Messenger (which, as an aside, seems to be a major form of social ostracism among teenagers!). No reports to teachers/police/whatever.

    I wonder if CEOP has had more of an impact in schools in the SE? They seem to be doing some very positive things, but obviously have a limited resource. Or are their peer networks more effectively informed. It did seemed that most Internet awareness came from peers as they felt, on the whole, parents and teachers had less awareness than they did. And the GCSE and A-level curricula for ICT and Computing hardly touch on such subjects…

    I’ll get off my hobby horse now…

17. Blindside : Blog Archive » What We Will Tell The Government, Part 1 Says:
    July 4th, 2007 at 6:06 am

    […] post it in stages on the wiki and excerpt it here. In total, it is to be 20 pages in length. In a previous post, we told you which subjects would be covered in the report. We also took the decision to highlight […]