I’ve spent allot of time thinking about issues relating to civil and technological liberties as well as the future implication of where we go from here.  One excellent discover this week has been BrainPrivacy’s collection of delicious stacks (lifestream 29.10.11, #2), which has produced much food for thought.  I’ve also been examining social networks in general and how they relate to this subject.  Facebook’s new Timeline feature (lifestream 29.10.11, #3) looks like a great way to share information, but still suffers from the same problems of data ownership and poor privacy inherent to the platform (lifestream 01.11.11, #3).  A telling example of this problem is the policy change put in place by the Ning network some years ago.  At its inception, Ning offered a free social networking service which could be branded and tailored as the user saw fit.  This popular service was the platform of choice for many small online groups however Ning changed its policy to include an ownership charge, thereby locking out many users  (including my local MargaretStreetMassive group (lifestream 01.11.11, #2)) and thus preventing them from being able to retrieve their data.

The rest of the week was devoted collating literature for the ethnographic study as well as commenting on other students work.  There have been some really interesting studies across a wide range of subjects, offering much to think about.  In short, a great week!