Built in the mid 13th century, Saint-Chapelle, the windows of the of the church were probably the first “clock” that the Parisians had ever seen. Though lacking in precise accuracy, the displays were able to change the color of the chapelbetween night and day, and the shifting seasons. This is a great example to see just how far our information systems have gone. As we saw them boast in class, Apples’ new Apple Watch claims to be accurate to within 50 milliseconds of the actual time. Not only is it accurate, but it can sync with your phone to receive texts, calls, app notifications and much more. The advancement from old information systems too new is highlighted by speed, precision, and size. The old information systems were public, accessible to anyone anytime. As information systems have grown more complex, they have held more personal data. Data people may not be comfortable being public. It is in this struggle that people debate the privacy rights of information system users. What rights does Apple have to the information that is loaded up on their devices? Are they allowed to store that information? Can they sell that information?
ENIAC, completed in the early 1940’s by the U.S. army is credited for being the first computer in the world. This was just a general-purpose computational machine. It wasn’t until 1969 that information could actually be sent and received by different computers. The first nodes were UCLA and Stanford, only a few blocks apart from each other at the time. Now today, we have the ability to instantaneously send more information than ENIAC could process in a day any where across the globe. Health monitors implanted in peoples chests, camera’s that monitor eye movement for advertisers, and cookies downloaded onto my computer by websites track every moment of my life and are analyzed almost immediately. It is for these reasons that I agree with John Foreman that the mysterious humanity is destroyed. With enough many spent anybody can learn more about a person than the person probably knows about themselves.
Background of ARPANET: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/A/ARPANET.html
gilee
I like this mention of the stained glass windows—which builds on Sharon Daniel’s argument that architecture can be a type of database, that is, a way to organize and filter data. What would you say is the 21st century equivalent of this kind of structural database?Reference
Your concluding argument resonates with me, as I similarly agree that mysterious humanity is taken away by the power of data collection and analysis. In Tuesday’s class, we concluded that even an unpredictable action in our eyes most likely would have been predicted by a database, potentially taking away from the beauty of spontaneous actions. However, we also mentioned the benefits coming from increased surveillance, such as more applicable and useful advertisements. Your blog post talks about the progress of technology and data surveillance over the course of history and as we move further into the future I expect we will see even more intrusive methods of tracking our data. As you point out, the issue is whether or not that data is exploited for commercial purposes, rather than remaining private and solely increasing our own utility. Although you may not agree, I believe that our society will become more comfortable with releasing our private data in order to reap the benefits of increased information. Thus, commoditized personal data will become depersonalized, much like how our humanity has become demystified. Whether this is good or bad is debatable, but I do believe that we will need to be comfortable with being slightly ignorant of our constant surveillance in order to appreciate spontaneous moments. Our mindset should be –Ok, I know my next move has probably been predicted, but I’m going to break from my normal habits and do something unpredictable at the human level.