Digital Dilemma, True Confessions

The Plight of Facial Recognition

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Escaping the silent eye of facial recognition is impossible in the digital age, unless you live somewhere with no technology or maybe wear a protective/religious covering on your head. As costs decrease to use surveillance cameras, along with more accurate facial recognition technology, identifying people is becoming easier. This type of technology is also becoming more readily available for anyone to use.

The artificial intelligence and technology used to identify faces is refined constantly. A few years ago, recognizing faces was something humans did better than machines. However, it seems in the near future, this is something that machines will be able to do better and faster. Using a computer also has the added benefit of being able to identify images from multiple sources (e.g., social media apps) quickly.

Last week I read a NYTimes article, “Unmasking a Company That Wants to Unmask Us All,” by Kashmir Hill. The article discusses Clearview AI, a company making a business by offering facial recognition services to law enforcement agencies. Once signed up, a law enforcement agent simply has to scan a picture of the unknown perpetrator for Clearview AI to do its magic. Behind the scenes, Clearview AI uses an algorithm that breaks faces down into a series of vectors, then matches the scanned image with ones available in its database containing millions of facial images.

And where does Clearview obtain all this data? By scraping available images (e.g., social media) that are supposed to be legal for them to use.

Apparently law enforcers have found the service useful for identifying suspects. They are also quick to point out that the facial recognition match is only one piece of evidence used in the whole case.

I find many things troubling about this. First of all, my face is no longer going to be something private that belongs only to me. I know there are labeled images of my face, either ones I’ve put up (e.g., LinkedIn) or that somebody else posted.

Secondly, by putting this service in a law enforcement context makes it seems less harmful than it could potentially be with different uses. Of course everybody wants to catch criminals, but what about when stalkers and marketers use this technology to prey on people, especially in vulnerable moments?

The technology is here and I’m not sure there’s any good way to control it anymore.

Digital Dilemma, True Confessions

Monitoring Screen Time

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After the technology companies invested so much time, energy and money into getting us all addicted to our gadgets and devices, now we’re all getting the message power down once in a while. That too much screen time is bad for us along with lots of suggestions for ways we can reduce our usage. Of course many of the recommendations come in the form of apps (i.e., more technology) to help limit our tech consumption.

Each week I receive a ping on my iPad giving me a weekly update of my screen time and the percentage it increased/decreased from the week before. I don’t recall signing up for these notifications, they just started to appear. I suppose this is the Apple’s way of helping me be more aware of how hooked I am on their product.

My challenge with all these notifications is sorting out the ways in which screen time is something addictive vs. something that is now just part of my daily life. For example, it’s common for me to call friends and family with video. That counts as screen time, but I wouldn’t classify it as addictive “screen” behavior. Nor would I want to go back to regular calling when my experience is enhanced with video. I rarely get to visit people who live far away, so it’s nice to be able to see them.

Digital photography is another way that screen time is unavoidable, unless I decide to never take any more photos. It’s not even possible to take photos without viewing a screen or some kind. I love making photo albums of my trips which I get printed. So while I can view the albums without a monitor, the creation of the album is screen time intensive.

I often read the newspaper on my smartphone, yet another way I engage with a monitor daily. I prefer it over the print version. Reading physical newspapers left my fingertips darkened with ink and it was challenging to fold the paper the right way to read while on transit. Also, it was annoying to flip through sections when an article continued on another page. So while I could reduce screen time by reading a printed newspaper, I prefer the electronic version.

I know I’m addicted in some ways, but a notification of my screen time without a breakdown is useless as a measure.

Digital Dilemma, Google, True Confessions

Virtual Assistant Revisited

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My partner received a Google Home mini for the holidays this year. I was (and still am) pretty opposed to having it hooked up in our home. Sadly, I lost the argument. Over the weekend I watched with a mixture of curiosity and paranoia as my partner read through the instruction manual, dutifully downloaded the Google Home app on his phone and started to train the device to recognize his voice. Secretly, I was a bit intrigued to see how it worked, especially after my initial post on this in 2016 (read here).

The microphone is creepy to me. I understand the device works through voice activation, but I feel uncomfortable thinking that a connected device could always be “listening”, or secretly recording our conversations (read more here). I expressed this to my partner, really more of a last, desperate plea to dissuade him from hooking it up. He said I was being silly and that if Google did things like that, it would have already been discovered and reported on. Despite his reassurances to me about the microphone, I noticed he turned it off after completing each command.

I thought the microphone on/off button was sneaky. When the microphone is “on” the button is completely white, but shows orange when in the “off” position. This seems opposite to most appliances where a bit of color usually indicates something is on. (see image below, from https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/7072889?hl=en-CA)

We experimented with the Google Home mini to play music. However, unless you pay for a premium service specific songs or artists can’t be requested, but Google will do its best to find something similar. What was really interesting was how Google interpreted different commands. For example, asking for nice, relaxing music resulted in some light pop/rock tunes. Definitely not something I consider relaxing.

Requesting morning music, resulted in an odd mix of top 40’s hits and classic rock tunes. The funniest one for me was the interpretation of whale songs. I meant actual whales (e.g., like humpbacks) singing in the ocean. Google, however, interpreted “whale” to be the name of a musical group or song. I tried the command in different ways trying words like, “ocean”, “nature”, “humpbacks” to get better results. After several attempts, we ended up with some nature/white noise sound. It was hard to tell what it was, really.

I’m still not convinced, but I see how hands-free options are useful.

Productivity, Spring Cleaning, True Confessions

Keeping Things Empty

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One strategy I use to help secretly increase my productivity and keep my house clutter-free is to focus on keeping things empty. Naturally, this only applies to certain things, but when applied routinely it can be effective to make a difference.

Some of the things I aim to keep empty in my physical world are the trash can, recycling bin, compost collector, sink (from dirty dishes), dish drainer, laundry basket, and the clothes drying rack. Most of these tasks are all things I dislike strongly, but also ones that usually don’t take too much time (laundry excepted). By keeping them empty, it makes me feel good, like I accomplished something to take care of myself and my home, even when life gets hectic. This in turn helps me to maintain motivation and stamina to work on other things. Even when I don’t end up working on anything else, I already feel good that I maintained these few small, but vital areas, in the home.

In the digital world, however, I don’t do as well to keep things empty. Some of my emptying goals are my email inbox(es), my “Next Actions” and “Waiting For” folders in my email(s), my digital camera and the camera roll on my devices. This is mostly because the volume and speed with which things accumulate make it really challenging to maintain.

Regarding the digital photos, by “empty” the camera roll on my devices, what I really mean is organize the photos by labeling them or grouping them in a folder and then transferring them to my central digital repository. I often fall behind on transferring the photos to my repository and end up doing them all at once. It usually takes a chunk of time and a lot of patience. However, I am pretty good at grouping photos on my devices into folders right away. This helps me to find things quickly later and gives me a chance to delete out the bad ones to free up memory for things I really want to keep.

If you decide to try out the “keeping things empty” strategy, start small with something easy and manageable. I’ve discovered it’s an uncomplicated way to get some desired results and feel positive.

Human Archives

Managing Expectations

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New Year’s always brings about a range of emotions for many of us as we reflect upon what happened the past year and set our intentions for how we want the new year to shape itself. Many of us make resolutions, committing ourselves to goals, aspirations, and promises, most of which are broken or unrealized as early as February. It’s not a secret that the majority of resolutions fail in a short period of time. Part of this is likely attributed to having unrealistic expectations.

I’m an ambitious person by nature and generally goal oriented. After surviving some crushing failures in my life, on both a personal and professional level, I’ve come to appreciate the magic of managing my expectations. This has also been a valuable lesson learned when working with clients and setting reasonable and achievable expectations for both of us.

So what does that mean to manage expectations?

When I write about managing expectations, it means being realistic about outcomes and coming up with contingencies in case things don’t go according to the plan. It means being flexible with what the final outcome might look like. When envisioning your end goals, think about the few things that are really critical and prioritize them. Which things do you have to have, and which ones can you wiggle a bit on or even let go?

I’ve also found it helpful to avoid that devastating feeling of failure when I’m able to define my goal, but not be attached to exactly how it needs to manifest itself. For example, a common New Year’s resolution many people have is to lose weight. Some may focus on a set number of pounds to lose, but perhaps it is more useful to imagine an article of clothing you want to fit instead. Sometimes it’s more important to build muscle and tone than to reduce the numbers. The same end goal can be achieved even though it didn’t go exactly as planned.

Even though I’m goal-oriented, I’ve discovered that remaining flexible, adaptable, and most important realistic about the final outcomes has helped me to feel good about my accomplishments, especially when they don’t happen as planned (or fantasized). Sometimes it can be hard to wiggle on something that you’ve dreamed about for so long, but who knows, the outcome may also turn out better than you had ever imagined.

Digital Dilemma

Holiday Shopping in the Digital Age

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A couple of months ago I purchased a bookcase online. It was part of a set that also included other things like a table and chairs, bookends, lamps, etc. all with the same theme. I checked the bookends a couple of times to see if the price would go down and then let it go. About a month after that, I checked the same website for another furniture item. The selection wasn’t great and the online reviews weren’t promising so I dismissed this company and started looking elsewhere.

The problem is that I dismissed this particular company, but they have not forgotten about me. Every item that I looked at more than once on their website, clicked on to read a more in-depth description, or price compared with another site has been emailed to me repeatedly by the company. I receive emails from this company non-stop, sometimes multiple ones on the same day.

The emails are tailored to “match” my interests. For example, many of the emails advertise the bookends I looked at more than once. Or sometimes the emails alert me to a sale going on, especially if one of the items I was interested in is part of it.

Part of me wants to appreciate this customized attention I’m getting from the company. In some ways it’s a nice courtesy to be alerted when an item I’m interested is going on sale. Or to be notified about other items I might enjoy based on past purchases.

However, the other part of me feels creeped out and almost irritated by the constant bombardment of emails. It’s like being hounded by an aggressive sales person in a store when you’re really there to browse and take your time. Even though I’m sometimes tempted to look at the items in these targeted emails, eventually I get so irritated by all the emails junking up my inbox that I end up unsubscribing, or deleting them without looking.

I’ve known for a long time that my online actions are followed, tracked, and acted upon by companies looking to make money off of me. But sometimes it’s so obvious it has the opposite effect on me. Some people enjoy this personalized attention, but for me, it makes online holiday shopping almost as annoying as dealing with the long lines and hoards of people in brick and mortar stores.