Fair Information Practices may be required to help ensure that active badges are a convenient technology which do not degrade people’s working lives. Other kinds of information practices, such as those in which location monitoring is non-reciprocal, and non-discretionary may help transform some workplaces into electronic cages.
Predictor: Kling, Rob
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for Computer-Mediated Communication, Rob Kling, a professor at the University of California at Irvine, writes: ”Andy Hopper of Olivetti…was enthusiastic about the use of ‘active badges’ … and insisted on discussing only their virtues [‘active badges’ provide a networked method of locating a person or item through the use of transmitting sensors.] … In this way, he took a position similar to that taken by spokespeople of many industries, including such as automobiles, who have delayed serious inquiries and regulatory protections for environmental and safety risks by insisting on unambiguous evidence of harm before investigating plausible problems. The active-badge systems which Hopper described seem to be regulated by Fair Information Practices in his own research laboratory (e.g., no long-term storage of data about people’s locations, reciprocity of use, discretion in use). These sorts of Fair Information Practices may be required to help ensure that active badges are a convenient technology which do not degrade people’s working lives. Other kinds of information practices, such as those in which location monitoring is non-reciprocal, and non-discretionary may help transform some workplaces into electronic cages.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Wireless Technologies
Name of publication: Computer-Mediated Communication
Title, headline, chapter name: Fair Information Practices with Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1994/jun/cscw.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Butler, Lawrence