From Shoeboxes to Digital Footprints and Digital Shadows

The seminal report From Being Human addresses the issues around the explicit and implicit storage of our interactions and activities in public places, while shopping or on the web. The authors question how we will manage and harness the enormous digital footprints and shadows that are being created by and for everyone and cover many subjects are the core of my research.
The scale of the phenomenon

Furthermore, huge amounts of information are being recorded and stored daily about people’s behaviour, as they walk through the streets, drive their cars and use the Web. While much of this may be erased after a period of time, some is stored more permanently, about which people may be naively unaware. In 2020, it is likely that our digital footprints will be gigantic, distributed everywhere, and in all manner of places and forms.

Explicit digital footprints (emptying the shoeboxes)

The decreasing cost and increasing capacity of digital storage also goes hand-in-hand with new and cheap methods for capturing, creating and viewing digital media. The effect on our behaviour has been quite dramatic: people are taking thousands of pictures rather than hundreds each year. They no longer keep them in shoeboxes or stick them in albums but keep them as ever growing digital collections, often online. The use of Web services for photo-sharing is transforming why we take photos by reinventing what we do with them.

Implicit digital footprints (our digital shadows)

Data are also being collected on our behalf or about us for no apparent reason other than because the technology enables it – our digital shadows, if you like. Personal video recorders (PVRs) record TV programmes chosen by the viewer but also automatically store them based on the viewer’s viewing profile or other criteria. Similarly, new devices are beginning to appear, such as SenseCam (see ‘A Digital Life’, below), that can automatically capture all kinds of traces of everyday life, in the form of images, video, conversations and sounds. The same is true for GPS devices which now appear in cars, in mobile phones and even embedded into clothing. All of these are capable of producing and storing large volumes of location data about our comings and goings without any conscious effort on behalf of their owners.

Data are also being deliberately recorded about us by governments, banks and other institutions using technologies such as CCTV, ATMs and phone logging. In the UK, CCTV often generates recorded ‘feeds’ of conversations and actions, as well as logging exactly where these conversations and actions took place. Some workplaces have meeting rooms that capture the content of and activities around discussions held within them. Many public debates are recorded for posterity by editorialising CCTV: in the UK, the Houses of Parliament are captured on behalf of the nation by the BBC, for example. Most people’s financial transactions are logged too, each time a credit card is used. International phone calls from the US are routinely tapped and analysed for suspicious ‘terrorist’ topics (with advanced word-recognition software allowing interrogators to locate possible conversational threads which are then focused on more attentively).

Questions on the new challenges for how we design technologies
But digital records are merciless: a silly prank captured on a mobile phone and then uploaded to a photosharing site may haunt someone for the rest of their lives in a way it never did before.

• Will it be possible for people to delete digital memories captured by others? Now that there are digital tools that can record everything we say or do, how will this affect our own abilities and ways of remembering?
• What tools and technologies are needed to effectively manage vast quantities of personal data?
• How can the privacy and security of digital footprints be ensured to prevent misuse but at the same time allow them to be shared with others when needed?
• How do people find out about their digital footprint and what tools should be provided?

Questions of broader impact

• How should society manage the storage and access of human data ethically and responsibly?
• Will people have the right to have information removed from their digital footprints?
• What are the legal implications of a growing digital footprint that maintains a record of our present and past?
• Should people be informed of the information that is being captured about them, who has access to it and how it is being used?
• To what extent do we need to design technology that allows people both control and feedback about what kinds of data are being monitored?

Relation to my thesis: The report address the notions of implicit and explicit digital footprint (with the term digital shadows for the notion of implicit footprint) and the implications in for their management, the privacy of the people generating them and their misuse (in extension to Be Counted! Return Your Census!). However, it does not mention the benefits beyond the individual (storing for memory) and social (life sharing, coordination) interests such as better understanding societies (the massive consequences on social sciences) and cities.