Privacy pop-up exhibit shows people in The Glass Room shouldn't throw phones – though they may well want to The Glass Room, a conceptual art and educational exhibit that opened Wednesday in a storefront on Market Street in San Francisco, provides visitors with a glimpse of how technology companies use personal data in the hope of prompting questions about the consequences of information technology. The interactive show, curated by …
"Hankey said she believes San Francisco, given its ties to the tech industry, is the place where this conversation should be happening."
(Gripey) Or they could have plopped it in the faces of Washington DC where the policy makers could get horrified/educated/motivated. But we wouldn't want new rules/laws/responsibilities created and enforced, would we? Rather we want to 'appeal' to the industry's 'conscience', right? Mozilla wants to be huggable by everyone, industry included.
(Grumpy) So that's where Mozilla's money goes! Highest cost exhibition space?
The ostensible privacy mission of this expo was somewhat undermined for me by a Tactical Tech web site that consists entirely of JavaScript with analytics code in the dominant place. There is in all fairness a "lite" site that doesn't use scripts, but you're only redirected to that if scripting is disabled. Tactical Tech describes itself as "an international NGO that engages with citizens and civil-society organisations to explore the impacts of technology on society". It's apparently based in Germany, despite which its privacy notice doesn't comply with the requirements of the GDPR.
What I refer to these days as "challenge initiatives" such as these are sprouting like mushrooms. I recently encountered another called Consciousness Hacking, whose mission is apparently to create "a world where wisdom and modern technology are in harmony" - a worthy aim, but from my admittedly single contact with it, rather a diffusely defined one.
The dominant characteristics of these and many other challenge initiatives seem to be huge enthusiasm, lack of specific focus and limited expertise in the arena being challenged. While sympathising with many of the aims, one wonders how effective this recipe is for driving real lasting change. I suspect that the feelgood factor of being apparently involved in big issues might often be more significant than the results obtained.
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