Category: Personal

  • Where there’s folk there’s fire

    That headline was, far as I know, first uttered by Britt Blaser in a March 2007 blog post titled The people’s law trumps the power law. It was thirteen years ahead of its time. Among many others, Britt was energized by  The Cluetrain Manifesto‘s 95 Theses, which David Weinberger, Chris Locke, Rick Levine and I…

  • Customers as a Third Force

    Almost all arguments in economics are advanced by two almost opposed positions, each walled into the castles of their ideologies, both insisting that their side has the solutions and the other side causes the problems—while meanwhile between the two flows a river of customers who, if they could be heard, and could participate with more…

  • Privacy is personal. Let’s start there.

    The GDPR won’t give us privacy. Nor will ePrivacy or any other regulation. We also won’t get it from the businesses those regulations are aimed at. Because privacy is personal. If it wasn’t we wouldn’t have invented clothing and shelter, or social norms for signaling to each what’s okay and what’s not okay. On the Internet we…

  • Privacy is an Inside Job

    Start here: clothing and shelter are privacy technologies. We use them to create secluded spaces for ourselves. Spaces we control. Our ancestors have been wearing clothing for at least 170,000 years and building shelters for at least half a million years. So we’ve had some time to work out what privacy means. Yes, it differs among cultures and settings,…

  • New Rules for Privacy Regulations

    The Wall Street Journal has an informative conversation with Lawrence Lessig: Technology Will Create New Models for Privacy Regulation. What underlies a change toward new models are two points: the servers holding vast user databases are increasingly (and very cheaply) breached, and the value of the information in those databases is being transferred to something…

  • Human Technology: Communications 2025

    https://vimeo.com/118044275

  • Electronic Health Records and Patient-Centric Design

    CIO’s story Why Electronic Health Records aren’t more usable offers an interesting perspective on the current (improved?) state of affairs in medical care records. From the article: The American Medical Association in 2014 issued an eight-point framework for improving EHR usability. According to this framework, EHRs should: enhance physicians’ ability to provide high-quality patient care…

  • Volvo’s In-Car Delivery Service

    In Volvo launches in-car package delivery service in Gothenburg, Volvo’s new service “lets you have your Christmas shopping delivered directly to your car.” Intriguing idea that saves on parking hassles like those people who are waiting/idling around the favored spots. With just days to go before Black Friday and Cyber Monday – the busiest online…

  • Data Privacy Legal Hack-A-thon

    Customer Commons is supporting, and board member, Mary Hodder, is hosting the Bay Area event. Additionally, there are NYC and London locations. Please join us if you are interested: This is an unprecedented year documenting our loss of Privacy. Never before have we needed to stand up and team up to do something about it.…

  • The Internet of me and my things

    Let’s say this key ring is yours and you’ve lost it. If somebody scans the QR code with their smartphone, they will see a message from you. The message can say whatever you want (such as, “Help! I’ve misplaced these, please call or text me at this number”), and you can update it any time,…