Life’s A Game? A Social Rehearsal for a Location-Aware Future5

by Luisa Mateus

“He did not know how long she has been looking at him, but for perhaps as much as five minutes, and it was possible that his features had not been perfectly under control. It was terribly dangerous to let you thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away… to wear an improper expression on your face was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.” – George Orwell, 1984

Google’s Eric Schmidt made a quip last week about young people’s flippant attitude to so much personal information being available online He indicated that it might be appropriate for young people to change their names in the future to escape past online activity.

“I don’t believe that society understands what happens when everything is available, knowable and recorded by everyone all of the time. We really have to think about these things as a society. We (Google, one presumes) know roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are.”- Eric Schmidt

So to contextualise this: Eric Schmidt, one of the most powerful men in the internet world, Chairman of the Board and CEO for Google is saying that there are problems with privacy and the internet? That, Google (the world’s biggest search engine), has access to millions of pieces of information about individuals that might not present them in a very nice light. Hold the press!

Anyone who has ever had anything to do with SEO; hell, even anyone who has ever used a search engine; or even turned a computer on; would surely know that the process of “Googling” yourself is common practice. It’s very easy for us Generation Xers to profess distain for people still stupid enough to still actually ask questions to others, instead of just “Googling” it. Save yourself the embarrassment, Grandad! It is, unfortunately, a fact of life that having so much information online can be problematic, especially when it comes to job hunting and/or maintaining a sense of professionalism in your day job.

Further difficulty arises when these social networks change their privacy and index settings and we, as consumers, are not aware of what information is actually available to those outside of our specified networks. Even if you think you’re posting witty and sarcastic retorts to your friends, within a specified network, you cannot always be sure that a search engine, isn’t indexing said comments, through a secondary site.

First MySpace was guilty of changing privacy options by bringing in “real names” (and not telling people that they were using those names for indexing), for other people to find them in search engine searches. We’re not just talking people in the user’s friends’ list either; we’re talking employers, family members, stalkers – basically, anyone you really don’t want to have access to that information. MySpace also made their status update function publicly visible by default, even to those who had privatised their profiles; something you wouldn’t necessarily have known, unless you happened to look at your own profile, when you weren’t logged in.

Then Facebook, proprietor of all things good and private, decided to reassess their privacy settings and defaulted everyone’s profile, so that they had even more information available to randoms than they had previously. Facebook got their asses well and truly kicked for that, and quickly defaulted everyone back to their original privacy settings and/or sent them notifications and directions as to how to change their settings back. After a fairly steely kicking by the press, that is.

Then there was Twitter. Oh Twitter, how I love thee! I love thee so much that I forget that you are open to all and sundry. I forget that even though I can set you to private, it means I lose half the functionality! I forget that you are indexing half of my tweets by other pages / companies set up for that purpose; I forget that you can search for me by username and/or real name and find me; I forget that you can type my name into the search box and you can see every tweet associated with me, ever! I forget to care about my privacy, because I love Tweeting so damn much that it would upset the pH balance of my life to factor “tweeting” out of it. (Literally, that’s how sad I am!)

Let’s not forget Tumblr, the website that doesn’t tell you it indexes your individual posts; something I, personally, have never experienced from MySpace, Facebook or even, to the same extent, Twitter. Yes, people, that’s your individual posts. Every annoying emo post, even the pornographic ones, publicly indexed. Because, that’s clearly what you want your boss to see!

And now there’s Foursquare. Created from the mind of Dennis Crowley, the “Pied Piper of hipsters”, Foursquare is a location “check-in” application that essentially geo-tags your physical location and makes other people aware of it. With the same resistance that I first felt for Twitter (“what’s the point of a social network that just posts your Facebook status updates?”), I feel it one again for Foursquare. I like games as much as the next person but I do not like the idea of everyone knowing where I am. I’m sure it’s lovely to be the King and/or Queen of whatever Castle you regularly frequent; I’m sure it’s also wonderful to be able to converse with other Foursquare users and battle it out for mayorship of some place you like a whole heap. Personally, right now, I really don’t see the point. Does anyone else find geo-tagging particularly creepy?

Essentially, Foursquare has the technology to map people’s real time locations, and can therefore already track their shopping preferences. According to a recent article in UK Wired, “Corps such as Brightkite are already charging other companies $10,000 – $20,000 for “local promotions”, targeting its estimated two million active users.” Surely, the amount of revenue that Foursquare can receive from advertisers with their technology, is nothing short of optimal?

Foursquare now has contracts with many of the big corporate players, including, but not limited to, Bravo TV, Starbucks, MTV, PepsiCo, Conde Nast, Warner Brothers, HBO and Domino’s Pizza. That’s some pretty serious dollar exchanging hands, surely?

In the same Wired UK article, iPhone game developer Justin Hall talks about how these game apps are simply training for that which is yet to come.

“Playing these games is training us to slowly have access to the knowledge of where everyone is in physical space, shared through the network. That’s crazy powerful information to have. We need games to help us relax into that. By playing, we learn about our social obligation. They’re a social rehearsal for a location-aware future.”

To an advertiser, these networks are a dream come true. Foursquare’s technology based on the geographical mapping of where a person is, according to their mobile device is pretty much the Holy Grail to advertisers. Imagine going to a shop to get something to eat for lunch. What do you know? Your phone pops up with an ad for a Mars bar. “Oooh I like Mars bars,” you think. “Maybe I’ll have a Mars bar.” Then you get back to the office, Mars bar sitting happily in your slightly podgier belly, and you think, “Would I have bought a Mars bar if an ad hadn’t popped up on my phone for one?”

The technology is already there – but the acceptance by the public is not yet.

So how do we get to the point, where it might well once be? We change public perception about ownership of this information out of the hands of the producer, and into the hands of the consumer, that’s how. I can see these social networks working much like a timeline, where each press statement that comes from the mouth of Google, etcetera, is an attempt to neutralise public perception about how creepy it is that these corporations can, and have, gathered so much information about us. It’s not their fault that this information is available; it’s the public’s fault for not realising how much information is available. If the public take ownership of what information is available about them (and are responsible enough to exercise editorial discretion when posting stuff on these public sites!), then it takes the grand task out of the hands of those who hold this information, essentially giving producers free rein to do what the hell they like with the information that we WILLINGLY give them.

But are people missing the real obvious crux of this position? If the angle of concern is how we control our own privacy, then surely consumers are being diverted away from the fact that these networks are becoming more public as time goes on? We’re all so busy Winston Smith-ing ourselves, self-regulating our actions and words, waiting for the virtual world (telescreen, anyone?) to trip us up, we’re losing sight of the fact that the companies who hold the information about us, can do whatever they want with this information (to an extent, of course) because we’re not questioning their right to do so. What exactly can/ are they doing with this information? Who’s asking that question?

I’m not suggesting that these companies are being irresponsible; far from it, in fact. I’m a huge fan of most of these social networks and I love new technology like a little magpie attracted to shiny things. I just think it’s a question that needs to be asked.

What do you make of geo-tagging and location-aware advertising? Does your internet identity pose you any difficulties in your day to day life? Should you self regulate your postings on public networks? Discuss, etcetera.