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2 May
(What happened to April? Archives baby!)
First Monday
It's Not What You Know, It's Who You Know: Work in the
Information Age
"Much of what we hear and read in the popular media and from business school gurus describes new forms of workplace
organization that presume robust institutional underpinnings. According to these accounts, technology and social
change are working together to create wondrous new organizational configurations such as learning communities,
quality circles, virtual teams, communities of practice. In contrast, our research on patterns of work in the information
economy reveals a countervailing trend - the rise of personal social networks as a key social structure enabling work.
Rather than being nurtured by institutionalized group structures, we found that workers are increasingly thrown back on
their own individual resources. Instead of being able to rely on various forms of teams and communities, access to labor
and information comes through workers' own social networks - structures which they must carefully propagate and
cultivate themselves."
NYTimes Magazine [requires 'free' registration}
The Eroded Self
"A liberal state should respect the distinction between public and private speech
because it recognizes that the ability to expose in some contexts aspects of our
identity that we conceal in other contexts is indispensable to freedom, friendship,
even love. Friendship and romantic love can't be achieved without intimacy, and
intimacy, in turn, depends upon the selective and voluntary disclosure of
personal information that we don't share with everyone else. Moreover, as
Kundera recognized, privacy is also necessary for the development of human
individuality. Any writer will understand the importance of reflective solitude in
refining arguments and making unexpected connections: in an odd but widely
shared experience, many of us seem to have our best ideas when we are in the
shower. Indeed, studies of creativity show that it's during periods of daydreaming
and seclusion that the most creative thought takes place, as individuals allow
ideas and impressions to run freely through their minds without fear that their
untested thoughts will be exposed and taken out of context."
"We are trained in this country to think of all concealment as a form of
hypocrisy. But perhaps we are about to learn how much may be lost in
a culture of transparency -- the capacity for creativity and eccentricity,
for the development of self and soul, for understanding, friendship and even love.
There is nothing inevitable about the erosion of privacy in cyberspace, just as
there is nothing inevitable about its reconstruction. We have the ability to rebuild
some of the private spaces we have lost. What we need now is the will."
ZDNET
Web startup stirs up privacy concerns
"Although other free ISPs already track and target their customers,
privacy advocates are concerned because the Predictive software
pushes the depth of digital eavesdropping to a new level. There are
federal laws about listening in on other people's phone conversations,
and privacy proponents argue that such protections should extend to
the Net -- largely accessed via phone lines, after all.
Until now, most tracking and profiling online have been done by
individual Web sites trying to determine who their visitors are, or by
advertising networks such as DoubleClick Inc. That company stirred a
privacy backlash earlier this year for its plans to tie its database on
Web-surfing behavior with people's names and addresses. DoubleClick
has since backed down. Traditionally, large ISPs haven't tracked their
customers' surfing."
posted by mcm 10:29 AM
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