Every year it’s always exciting for me to review my last 50 postings and see if any new themes or interests appeared. As I discussed in my 300th Posting, the first rule of my blog is that it’s my creative space, giving myself permission to explore any topic that seems appealing.
This past year, many posts fit into my Digital Dilemma series, focusing on new alternatives or options we find ourselves confronting because of how the world is changing. A few favorites from the past year include:
- Algorithm Perfumery – using AI to make custom scents for people
- Persona vs. Person – using social media to portray a different side of ourselves
Also in this series I explored privacy and how challenged this concept is becoming with advances in facial recognition, location tracking, and monitoring online activities. I’ve always been both fascinated and creeped out by technology advances to fine-tune advertising, discounts, search results, news feeds, etc. based on analyses of our online activities. Must we always be forced to choose between convenience and control?
Participating in society requires us to have an online presence, a place where privacy has mostly been an afterthought. Advances made in facial recognition, combined with decreasing costs for surveillance equipment, challenges our right to remain anonymous in public. Even for those of us that don’t realize it yet. Read more about tracking and facial recognition:
- The Plight of Facial Recognition – discusses the implications of increased accuracy with facial recognition, followed by The Price of Facial Recognition
- Location Tracking: Convenience or Corporate Surveillance – turning on your location is used for more than just directions, with instructions to disarm locations in Location Tracking: How to Protect Yourself
- Holiday Shopping in the Digital Age – how online activities are tracked to target consumers
I added some new favorites to the Human Archives series:
- Life Languages – an exploration of communication methods that don’t always include words
- Reruns – sometimes watching reruns of a special show makes me feel close to my deceased father
- Resetting the World Right Again – swimming is like hitting a refresh button on life
- Read more from the Human Archives collection here
The technombie series continues by following a couple of kids recruited to fight a war against enemies using only virtual reality (VR). Except the VR is more real than they think…
Catch up on my trip to Iceland here.
In my professional life, I recently authored an ebook for AIIM (The Association for Intelligent Information Management), What are the Uses of Email: Addressing the Challenges of Email Management. It’s targeted towards information management professionals, but some sections are applicable to anyone who works in an office. Download your free copy here.
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