[11] Privacy & Data Literacy

Still on a bit of a data ethics and privacy train at the moment. I went to see the exhibition last week ‘AI – who’s looking after me‘ and it was really interesting to see some alternative explorations of uses of AI and creative exploration of it. It helped me understand what a final project could look like if it wasn’t an essay. There were lots of interactive elements but also some hard hitting visual stimulation to help you think about the humans behind, and impacted by, the technology. I particularly liked Mini Onuoha’s ‘The future is here’ where she had images of the spaces where people worked to classify training data for MLs.

I also read ‘Privacy is Power’ by Carissa Véliz, which is a good call to action on why privacy is a collective responsibility. I’ve given a copy to my mother in the hopes that she gets rid of her ring doorbell and echo dot. On the same theme I attended an interesting Linkedin live as part of the ECA discussing how website owners can be better at asking for and collecting personal data, specifically around the theme of cookies. I’m a big fan of rejecting all cookies and also advocate to my clients to minimise the data they collect and be more consentful. It was nice to hear industry colleagues talking about the same thing. It has made me think about how digital literacy is a huge problem in our society and how much inequality there is due to the knowledge gap. So many people are vulnerable just by the very act of using digital tools that they don’t understand. It also isn’t something that is specific to ‘older people’ either – a lot of the younger generations that are considered digitally native are not actually technically competent. They are just used to the pervasiveness of technology and a lack of privacy that older generations aren’t. It doesn’t mean that they are more savvy about where their data is going, how to protect it and how to ensure they are less vulnerable.

Building off my mullings the other week about how I’m interested in data, privacy, security and ethics – as well as my thoughts around data literacy… I wonder if there is an alternative project in here about looking at the inequality of digital literacy and how that can impact people’s lives? There are the obvious thoughts around access to services and knowledge that people miss out on when they aren’t digitally literate but what about those that are able to use digital tools but not aware of how to be safe?

Not sure what the project could be about though – some sort of proposal of how to educate people? There is of course the ethical questions about whether it is the users responsibility or the responsibility of those who build the tools to be safe, which is what a lot of the policies and laws seem to focus on.