Reflections on the Knowledge Society

Fascinating, how fast industry jumps on the MOOC bandwaggon! However, it can hardly come more farcical than this example:

SIPX is yet another spin-off company out of Stanford “created to manage copyrights and deliver digital documents for the higher-education marketplace“. What SIPX identify as a problem is that content owners are faced with piracy that affects distribution and fair compensation. Equally, stretched library budgets to acquire licences hinders professors to prescribe digital materials and students studying them. All well known issues. However, despite their claim that they’re based on research from 2005, I see SIPX merely as parasitic squatters trying to occupy the middle ground between university libraries and students/lecturers (and charging for it).  Here is why:

According to their description, a professor offers a link to a SIPX registered resource, and posts the link. “A student, who clicks on such a link, is authenticated for applicable discounts, pays any necessary royalties, and then accesses the digital content for electronic reading, printing or both, all in a single, seamless user experience.” [link]

In the typical universities that I know, the university library already pays for the usage licence and receives a discount from publishers if available. Especially, if they buy large numbers of a book or buy more stuff from the same publisher. So, why, I ask, would the student now pay for an access licence again, plus presumably an additional charge to SIPX?

Neither is SIPX proposing to protect the copyright of authors or publishers. Despite their problem statement above, it is unlikely they’d go to court to defend the IPR of a content provider. This is typically the duty of publishers not of the brokers in the middle.

Even bolder is their statement on MOOC readiness [link]. With SIPX, “MOOC providers can enrich the student experience with a variety of readings that are otherwise difficult to clear for copyright”. What part in Massive OPEN Online Course (MOOC) did they not understand?

To me, companies like SIPX are part of the problem. The solution is quite simple: Open Access. Professors create their materials as OERs and OAI articles, and should only promote open access materials to their students. Even more so in a MOOC.

It looks like the entire Internet transparency movement is in a crisis. Maybe it was simply wrong to hope that the Internet would bring unsurpassed freedom to the world. Attempts like Julian Assange’s ‘Wikileaks’ failed. Oppressive governments in totalitarian countries tightly control content and access, and even in liberal Western societies, people’s online behaviours are monitored and analysed by suspicious security and commercial bodies alike. Formations like Pirate Parties are on a steep downward slope after some initial attention. Even the free sharing of content and software – Pirate Bay or Rapidshare – has turned from a false illusion into an illegal activity, hunted down by patent police and copyright agents. The utopian vision that the concept of “ownership” will give way to the “commons” and the “common good”, and, therefore, lead to a freer society is no longer real.

Time to reflect what we mean by “free”, a word that is all too often used without proper contextualisation, thus giving it a propagandistic meaning rather than a philosophic reality.

First, there is “free” as in “costs nothing“. This, of course, was never really true for the Internet, as equipment and access by subscription always came with a hefty price label, even in the good old days of dial-up modems. More money always bought you more bandwidth and prioritised connectivity, and this is even more so today. Deeper pockets also priviledge you with special treatment such as better visibility and higher rankings. Free software is still around to some extent, but closely attached to spam advertising or selling your soul to a sinister network of commodifiers. Personal data has become the new currency on the web. Where funding is provided by benevolent third parties to provide free-to-all, e.g. OERs, this most often ceases once funding is consumed.

Second, “free” as in “free speech“. Free speech on the Internet suffers from the constant danger of being monitored and recorded by copycats, hackers or, what’s worse, authorities and companies. Free speech and expression of opinions are subject to commercial exploitation, and various governments have used these free expressions to expose critics or label people’s political attitudes, if nothing else, for national security reasons. The real concern, though, is that the Internet enables not only immediate reprisals, but also future ones. Ignoring the threats is like ignoring a Jewish star on one’s own jacket. At the very least, one’s personal career maybe at risk for portraying attitudes that may haunt you later in life. So the safest bet is to adhere to an invisible code of conduct that is best described as exchanging pleasantries. Can we still call this “free”?

Third, “free” as in “freedom to do what you like“. This is closely connected to free speech, since most of our digital lives consist of verbal or audio-visual expressions of who we are or pretend to be. More and more, digital identities are being tied to real IDs, and it becomes less acceptable to fake who you are or to have multiple digital personas. Clamp-down methods include a real  e-mail/phone verification, server verification (for website owners), endorsement (e.g. networkblogs, linkedin), or social connectivity of who connects to you. At the same time, people have become legally liable for what they do online. More transparency in this area of course inhibits bad guys to pretend to be what they are not, it gives security and trust to shoppers and subscribers, etc. Nothing wrong with it if you are happy to be who you are. But this also leads to decreased “mobility” of transgressing your own self, and a higher risk that anything you do will be held against you perhaps decades later. Media and opposition will have a feast in exposing the past of any future prime minister, colleague or rival. Some ordinary things, like the sharing of music or videos with friends are even less permissible in the digital world than in the unplugged neighbourhood.

All of these freedoms were only dreams that had to fail as much as they succeed or fail in the real world. Letting the mob rule was an online experiment that did not show the benefits idealists had hoped. Things that were available for free quickly turned sour by astroturfers, trolls, spammers, hackers and other exploiters. Vandalism seems to be as much human nature as the longing for freedom. Therefore, it is inevitable that all online paths eventually must lead back to the rules and social concepts we have in the real world.

Have you ever wondered why nowadays there are half a dozen or more authors on a scientific paper? Have you had it that you co-author a paper with someone and suddenly another author appears on the list without having contributed?

There is substantial squatting going on in the field of authoring. In my view, this constitutes one of the worse sorts of academic plagiarism by claiming something to be yours that is the work of others. In this, academic publishing has become comparable to collaborative school essays: some do the work while the lazy guys latch on and get the marks. But there is no teacher to assess the individual contribution so it is nearly impossible to tell who contributed and how.

The motives are clear: Career and personal professional performance are measured in quantities, so having your name appear more often, or having a longer publication list directly benefits your reputation and career. Because author lists are sequential, the quantitative method leads to a dilemma as there can be no equals. Additional value measures need to be introduced, and, therefore, the authors’ list has become a battleground! First authors are deemed to be more valued than second, third, forth authors. Additionally, there is a battle for last place, which can be called the “mentor” spot. The person appearing last on an author list gets the benefit of being associated with the mentor-ship of the entire work, i.e. the authority in the background. Some research departments even operate a policy that the Head appears on all outgoing publications. The same applies to PhD supervisors.

People obviously ignore the possibility of acknowledgements, where the mentoring support of supervisors etc.  can be explicitly mentioned. Instead, a distorted picture of authorship emerges that leaves the reader in the dark on who’s responsible for the content and who exercised influence over it. Furthermore, it is strictly speaking against conventional IPR and copyright because only the manifestation itself, not the idea or revision qualifies for protection. Holding an opinion or idea but not recording it, does not fall under IPR. For this reason, many PhD supervisors claim that when a student writes “their” ideas in a paper, they have the claim of authorship. But, in this case, we reduce the PhD researcher to a ghost writer, which is far from the reality.

For me, this battle for authorship has become one more nail in the coffin of traditional academic publishing. But there is little one can do, since junior researchers are in a weak position to protest against exploitation, squatting and position battles. And more senior academics are unlikely to cry for change of something that benefits them without moving a finger.

Many institutions now begin analysing student data from their VLEs. John Fritz gave an insight into what University of Maryland (UMBC) are doing with Blackboard and how they play back usage information to students in their CMA (check my activity) tool. London City University do similar things with their Moodle environment, and also my own institution, the Open University of the Netherlands, looks into Learning Analytics with our Moodle, Blackboard, and OpenU environments.

One thing that’s bugging the full utilisation of Learning Analytics, is privacy of student data. I am not really sure where these concerns originate from, and mostly it seems that they are made up on the fly rather than being based on solid legalistic arguments. But the effect is that, frequently, a group perspective of Learning Analytics is adopted to avoid the problem zone. This allows to anonymise a learner within a cohort, and results in emergent group patterns, such as how many percent of the students were active in chat.

This group perspective might be useful, for example, in evaluating functionalities or content items. It can highlight documents or dicsussion topics that are popular or unpopular with students. It can also show the course owner or tutor the most common learning paths through the online parts of a course.

However, in pedagogic terms and with respect to personalised learning support, such information is of limited value in helping learners to improve on their learning. Playing back the usage information to learners for reflection is of course another option, but in our survey earlier this autumn, the clear majority of expert respondents indicated that learners would require support to make the most of the Learning Analytics results. After all, what does it tell the learner that they have used the forum less than other students or less than last week?

This leaves the individual analytics that goes to the teacher unanonymised! The question is how this can really be a privacy issue, since there is already an established trust relationship and learning contract between these two parties, and it must be clear to everyone that evaluating engagement is part of a teacher’s job. In my mind, this is the best way how Learning Analytics can be usefully exploited for learning support.

Privacy is a real concern that shan’t be belittled as this news item shows, but there is no need for paranoia where established (teaching) processes and accepted trust relationships already exist. However, it maybe wise to create awareness and provide an opt-out clause for the unwilling.

“If you got nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry” - This is just one of the arguments brought forward to claim that the right to individual privacy has an expiry date in the modern Data and Information Society. Everything should be open, transparent, and visible. Nice thoughts, but, in my eyes, quite naive and unpractical.

There are three reasons why I think that the protection of privacy is critical:

(1) Individual privacy is one of the most important factors for own identity building

(2) Without individual privacy there can be no modern democracy

(3) Abandoning personal privacy only serves the powerful, it doesn’t empower the powerless

Although privacy as a concept in law or society is fairly recent, privacy exists and has existed virtually forever. It is a basic psychological need of individuals. Psychologists have revealed that we adapt our need for privacy to the surrounding environment, for example in crowded inter-generational households sharing the same sleeping space.

Privacy isn’t just another word for ‘secrecy’ or ‘seclusion’. Privacy can happen in the middle of a crowded square. It describes the space assigned to ourselves to develop independent thoughts and an own opinion, including making sense of our past and present existence. A space vital for the formation and evolution of our identity throughout our lives, which also contains the possibility for changing. Let’s not forget that the shedding of past aspects of our lives constitutes part of our continuous identity management. Mireille Hildebrandt describes privacy as “a phenomenon that regards the relationships between self and its environment/other selves.” She goes on to say that technology extends the space in which access to a person is possible to a public that cannot be seen by the participants – thus constituting an asymmetry. If, for example, computer systems never forget what we did, this is going to haunt us and may prevent us from adapting and changing directions in our lives (e.g. from sinner to saint).

“Privacy is the process of boundary negotiations that allows a person to hold together while changing.” (Hildebrandt)

Obviously, if we lose access to identity building, opinion forming, boundary negotiations, and managed change, we lose our rights of deciding our own destiny. Hence, with loss of privacy we cannot have a free democracy of self-determined citizens. Undermining privacy has not by coincidence been a trademark of totalitarian regimes throughout history.

I also see an asymmetry in the potential exploitation of privacy between different players. Access to resources such as surveillance equipment, biometric sensors, computer processors is one of the inequalities that would further dis-empower the powerless, i.e. the Joe Blogs who’s data is commodified and monetised by data companies. The other imbalance is the complexity of privacy between individual persons and organisations/companies or the government. It is easy to make sense and connect behavioural data from a single public citizen, but not trivial to do the same thing for a large multi-national company. In this way, it is naive to think that mutuality would work to benefit “everyone” in the same way – to result in a better society. Wishful thinking, but far from any hope!

Privacy and data protection laws have served us badly in the past, but with increased data collection and behaviour tracking activities, I believe it is time for a full revision and reform.

With ubiquitous ambient sensors, biometrics, face recognition technologies, and more, we can no longer ignore the fact that our every move is being watched, recorded, and analysed. The principle of informed consent as advocated by the AoIR no longer works in the current technological environment. Even in the past, no-one ever signed an agreement to be filmed on CCTV or be fingerprinted and iris-recorded by airport security or immigration. Whatever happened to this data and where they are now, we may never find out.

Data collection requires tools or technology, such as a questionnaire, a video camera over the entrance, or a logfile for analysis of online behaviours. Traditionally, the data gathered from these technologies (with or without user consent and awareness) legally belonged to the data client, that is the person or company who owned the tool for gathering. The data subject, on the other hand, i.e. the person being recorded and analysed, had extremely limited rights, mainly extending to the distribution of the collected data. Private companies that thrive on the data economy had simple ways to circumvent any legal protection by presenting users with a blanket “sign-away-all-your-rights” form hidden behind a big “ACCEPT” button.

It is worth noting that these signed away rights are extremely difficult to revoke, and not differentiated. Google, for example, frequently integrates its services and develops new services. While this is good and drives the Web forward, there is, however, no easy way to opt out of integrated services. The user is actually never asked for their consent. What if you are happy with your GMail, but don’t want to have the Google chat integrated where everyone can see you’re online or not? What if you are ok with Picasa and lately signed up to Google+, but were never asked under which conditions your Android photos are posted in either? Many times a new Google service comes along and the user acceptance is inherited from a previous Google service, even if it no longer exists. Apple, on the other hand, throws a 46 page legal document in your face that you have to read virtually every month or whenever an iota changed (of course they don’t tell you what changed!).

Away from the Web, things have not been standing still either. Ubiquitous ambient sensors combined with face recognition software are no longer only there for security purposes. Private companies offer services to pubs to analyse their customer base, busy times, their staff performance behind the bar, etc. Dogs and farm animals are already chipped, children are GPS tracked to avoid truancy, scandals have emerged with iPhones and TomToms tracking users without their knowledge. Think a little bit further ahead: medical MRI and CT hardware is still quite large and expensive, but how long until this too is pocket sized? Would gathering peoples’ brain activity on the fly be something we want to sign away too with the click of a button? “A penny for your thougths” I hear Facebook say. Is that all that it’s worth?

What we need is a turn-around in the law, where data, by whoever and whichever way collected is owned by the person producing the behaviour leading to the data (i.e. the data-subject). The owner then needs to legally “release” the data for specific purposes and with a concrete expiry date, at which point the dataset should either self-destruct or be granted an extension. In any case, terminating a service contract should lead to automatic destruction of all data held about the user, unless otherwise agreed at the time of termination (not at the time of signing up to a service).

There is quite some buzz about Facebook’s release of new features, especially ‘Timeline’ a new style profile page that captures not only what you enter into a profile form, but anything and everything you’ve entered into big bad Facebook. This account by Ben Werdmuller is a good and sobering read not to get too enthusiastic about this new feature, even though it is hailed as disrupting and re-defining social networking.

It may well be disruptive to social networking, but it may also be disrupting your actual social life as such. Facebook set out as a stream service, where people posted throw-away messages, such as when they had their pizza and whether they liked it or not. It also hosted a lot of emotional content too, when someone was feeling down, a failed exam, a broken heart, etc. These messages are now coming back to haunt them!

Many people have a naive attitude while posting and sharing on Facebook as is easily visible from the commentary to Ben’s blog post. The belief that you can simply turn things off in the privacy settings and then they’re gone is one of those negligent errors made. Especially, young adolescents are sometimes irritatingly sloppy and just won’t see the potential harm. ‘Timeline’ is actual proof that whatever you posted in Facebook, was diligently kept by the company, and here it is again, just like the skeleton in the cupboard.

According to a recent study, already 10% of divorces are due to Facebook activities. I imagine that ‘Timeline’ maybe good in increasing this number as dark secrets from the past suddenly may pop up again in your network unless you go spend hours on end and delete items from your profile.

As if this wasn’t enough, there is this other disruptive effect that social network platforms have on our society (but for once not Zuckerberg’s fault): the current discussion in Missouri where apparently a law was halted by court that would have blocked teachers talking one-on-one with students on Facebook. It’s criminalising teachers because they engage in private talks with students – what’s that all about?! Have they ever even considered that especially shy students use private electronic means to get help from their teachers in socially difficult situations (e.g. bullying, parental abuse, suicidal depressions). A teacher is often the one person they trust and open themselves up to, where other cries for help fail. In this day and age this will obviously involve electronic communication.

Whenever we go online and sign up for a service, whether it is an online music store, gambling site, social networking platform, or e-government service, we are presented with a link to the terms of service. They are not geared to protect us as consumers but to protect the service provider from any law suits. Every agreement, in theory, requires careful reading of sometimes dozens of pages, and acceptance by the user.

Have you ever wondered why this is not required in real life? When I walk the city centre and enter a public library, a bakery, a hairdresser, or the tax office, I am not presented with umpteen different contracts that I have to sign to be allowed in! So what is wrong with online?!

Ok, to be fair, a few extras are required to allow online trade, such as providing the company with the address where to send the goods, and with your credit card details to paying for it. These may require extra protection. But the rest, is simply exploitation of the consumer as not only being a customer, but also a product (to sell on to other businesses).

Whereas in real life consumers are protected by a generic legal framework that confines the shops and service companies to what they can or cannot do, online business is based on individual contracts between you and the business in question. This often leads harms way, since customers neither have the legal expertise nor the time to wade through pages and pages of legal talk. All the people I know, prefer to take the risk rather than reading the conditions that apply, be it an airline booking or a photo sharing service.

What we need is a generic consumer law that regulates online business holistically and does away with the bumph. This would not only save hours of time creating these ‘ToS’, but also reading it and wondering what rights you are signing away. Customers could actually focus on what they came for, i.e. buying stuff, rather than scratching their head and going away again.

If you think a dictionary is a safe learning tool, think again! The Wall Street Journal’s “What they know” series exposed dictionary.com as one of the worst offenders in terms of people’s privacy.

Should we be surprised? Maybe not. If you entertain a web presence yourself and work hard on attracting an audience, you probably understand the value of these analytics. It does not necessarily always have to do with revenue creation from marketing companies. Many websites (like this one) are small, personal, and not-for-profit. Analytics help to see the impact that a site makes in the big wide world. It’s about learning – learning about your visitors, and positioning yourself.

Looking at user tracking not from an advertising perspective but from the angle of corporate learning, should we not applaud the eagerness with which companies want to know more about their customers and visitors? Sure, they could use questionnaires and other traditional methods, but as with Learning Analytics more authentic information lies in the data.

We are caught in a dilemma. On 25 May 2011, a new EU directive on cookies came into force, which requires explicit consent by users before placing cookies. This has received much criticism, while actually aiming to protect citizens. Originally, such consent was given via the browser software (where you could also turn off cookies completely), but as the dictionary.com case shows the issue has grown out of proportion.

On the corporate learning front mentioned above, the directive will make a difference in that a company can no longer assume that the tracking data collected reflects all users of the site, but only those “subscribing” to it. How useful such data will prove remains to be seen. We may see similar limitations imposed on Learning Analytics data.

What is needed is a balance between the use of data and the exploit of privacy. We are still far away from any acceptable solution to serve both ends of the data economy. I have no objections about first party cookies (yellow strands on the above graph). These support the company directly in learning from their visitors and clients, which leads to better services. But it’s an entirely different matter altogether selling information to unknown third parties (blue strands) behind the user’s back.

PS: I’ll be using thefreedictionary.com from now on.

You may still think that a book is like any other book, but there is a growing shift from product-based competition to usage-based competition. Ebooks are a perfect example of this and demonstrate how market economies can lead to confusion.

Take this situation: previously, you bought a washing machine. It was yours. You could do with it whatever you liked, you could wash socks in it or even shoes, carpets, curtains if you wanted to. When buying the machine, there was a range of products that you compared in terms of their functionality, electricity consumption, size, and other criteria that you set. The consumer merely compared product with product.

This has changed: imagine that now you pay for a washing machine, but it is not yours, and instead of checking its suitability for your purpose, you have to read the conditions of use. How many people’s socks you are allowed to wash in it. Sorry, no carpets or trainers. You pay per wash, or per wash load. You cannot wash your friends’ clothes without an extra licence. You get the point…!

This is exactly what’s happening with ebooks, online music, apps, movies, etc. (see post on UltraViolet). We are led away from comparing products to comparing services. And, just in case, I’d like to mention that the services are dictated by the companies, not by the consumer: “give me a washing machine where I can wash my grand-children’s socks?!” – “sorry, but no.” or: “Ah, we have a premium licence that includes family members not living in the same household, do you want to upgrade?”

Sounds too absurd to be realistic? – let’s hope it stays that way.

Here is an interesting news item on a recent Europe-wide crack down on ebook publishers, showing how far this can go. JISC has recently funded an ebook observatory project, and one of the outcomes of the user survey was a clear demand for a common set of licencing terms and conditions that are easy to understand. Among other things, this is deemed to reduce time and effort, and enables archival access.

While users want more text ebooks for their learning, they want the ability to put course text ebooks content on portable devices, the ability to print out sections, unlimited concurrent access. And they demand aggressive digital rights management (DRM) restrictions to be lifted. Libraries too feel that wider use of ebooks is compromised by access limitations.