Living Without Parental Controls

1. Living Without Parental Controls Jonathan GrudinWikiSym 2007

2. Living Without Parental Controls • New technologies • IM, text messaging, IRC • Wikis, weblogs, tagging • GPS, real-time visualization, map mash-ups • Digital photos, music, video • Digital places and spaces • New skills and behavior • Multimedia authoring • Multi-tasking • Emotion & engagement • Search, browse, assess, synthesize Photo by moriza.Some rights reserved.

3. Email in 1985 Used mostly by students Used by everyone Access limited to friends Accessible to everyone Clients not interoperable Complete interoperability Conversations ephemeral Conversations saved Chosen for informality Became the formal option Organizational distrust:Chit-chat? ROI? Mission-critical technology IM in 2005 Used mostly by students Use spreading rapidly Access limited to friends Pressure to remove limits Clients not interoperable Pressure for interoperability Conversations ephemeral Recording is more common Chosen for informality Becoming more formal Organizational distrust:Chit-chat? ROI? Will be mission-critical! Starting With Students and today is evolving

4. Human Nature & Social Organization • Human nature does not change • Groups: Millions of years • Organizations: A few thousand years • Communities: A few thousand years or less

5. Technology Is Changing Fast

6. Human Nature & Technology Change

7. Human Factors and Ergonomics (Management) Information Systems Office Systems Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) Ubicomp Barn VACUUM TUBES Room MAINFRAMES Cabinet MINICOMPUTERS SIZE,COST, ETC. Desk MICROCOMPUTERS Palm HAND-HELD Invisible EMBEDDED 1955 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005

8. Reasoning About Nonlinear Growth 107 70 106 60 105 50 104 40 103 30 102 20 10 10 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

9. Psychological Studies & Effects Even when aware of non-linear growth, we reason poorly about it • Seeing more data doesn’t help us anticipate! • When it happens, we misattribute effects

10. ! ? Visualizing Exponential Growth Visualizing exponential growth: On the left, with the y-axis adjusted, a rapid rise is always present. As time goes on, there is a longer tail, i.e. a longer period of no change as seen in the scale currently of interest. As noted on the right, this creates a false sense of security. See column in ACM Interactions magazine, November-December 2006.

11. TX-2 $10M PDP 1, 7 $1M Alto $100K Altair $10K PC Mac GUI-capable HCI focus (HF, CHI) Approximate costs in 2006 US dollars $1K $100 1955 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005

12. Barn VACUUM TUBES Room MAINFRAMES Cabinet MINICOMPUTERS SIZE,COST, ETC. Desk MICROCOMPUTERS Palm HAND-HELD Invisible EMBEDDED 1955 1965 1975 1985 1995 2005

13. Photo by moriza.Some rights reserved.

14. Impacts of Hardware Changes Organizational& InstitutionalBehavior ConsumerBehavior UserInterfaceR&D SoftwareR&D HardwareR&D 1970s 1985 2000 2015?

15. Emerging technologies…

16. Multiplayer Games & Group Behavior New ways to form and organize groups New ways of viewing the world New approaches to learning

17. Wikis in the Workplace Is This a Wiki? • Advantages • Lightweight • Accessible • Challenges • Motivation • Management • Ideal niche: • Recognized needto communicate • Clear division of labor • Firm deadlines

18. Weblogs in the Workplace • Categories of most weblogs today • Public personal interactive diaries • ‘A-list’ bloggers on politics, technology, events, cool stuff • Corporate use progression • Incoming: event coverage • Incoming: monitor comments on your products • Externally-facing: tremendous ability to put human face on your enterprise • Internally-facing: approach to project visibility and knowledge management

19. Managing Knowledge: Challenges & Potential Solutions • Digital documents are difficult to find • Adding metadata is work • People disagree on labels • ► Tagging – lightweight, visible, bottom-up (flickr, del.icio.us) • Is ontology overrated? • Documents are difficult to assess • Context missing • ► Project weblogs linked to document repository • Like a project “Read Me” file, or comments on code • So people bypass system • Expertise locator software hasn’t succeeded • ► Search technologies, browsing skills will contribute

20. Why Web-Based Community Software Thrives • More life is online • Engaging • Lightweight, inexpensive Why organizations slower to adopt? • Older user population • Security concerns and firewalls • Productivity concerns • Critical mass barrier: • 1% adoption by a group = no one • 1% adoption within an organization = failure • 1% adoption by Internet users = huge success

21. All This Opportunity– Any Constraints? • IM, text messaging, IRC • Tagging, weblogs, wikis • GPS, real-time visualization, map mash-ups • Digital photos, music, video • Digital places and spaces – virtual worlds, games, avatars, personas • Multimedia authoring • Multi-tasking • Emotion, engagement addedto perception & cognition • Search, browse, assess, synthesize

22. Group Functions (McGrath, 1991)

23. Transformation…

24. Oral, Literate & Digital Societies Oral Literate Digital

25. A Major Challenge • We evolved to live in a world of ‘here and now’ • Dangers & opportunities immediate • Emotion & status expressed directly • Informal conversation was important • Social conventions guided behavior

26. A Major Challenge • Technologies enable influence across time and space • Actions have effects in other times & places • Inappropriate emotional responses • Informality is difficult • Social control turns to policy & law • Digital technologies accelerate change • From local or ‘situated’ activity to global visibility: we act on a world stage • Our actions follow us, frontiers & fresh starts are gone

27. Repression or tolerance?

28. How Do We Reconcile Policy and Practice? Rules and Behavior? • On one hand: • How we believe people behave • How we think they should behave • Laws • Regulations • Policies • Procedures • Social norms • On the other: • How people actually behave • Greater visibility exposes inconsistencies, violations, & uneven enforcement • Recording these problems forces us to confront them • As technology is more deeply integrated into lives,it exposes ever more deviation

29. Top-Down Enforcement Can Be Problematic • Activity is highly contextual • Unforeseen contingencies & problem-solving are common • Policies & procedures are often provisional: • Goals, guidelines or possible approaches • To enforce caution or warn against excess • May conflict or be overly general • A “final court of appeal” • Some emerging products enable people who don’t know how others work to enforce compliance by pushing a button.

30. Understanding and Negotiating • Sometimes, behavior will be constrained to fit policy • Sometimes, more nuanced rules will emerge • Understanding and tolerance will increase • How difficult will the adjustment be? ?

31. Living Without Parental Controls Jonathan GrudinWikiSym 2007 Photo by moriza.Some rights reserved.