DON'T KNOW

In writing up our 1-pager on Personal Info Economy (which we affectionately now call PIE), I was reminded that there are still many things I don't know.

• All these apps - Personal, iAllow, Klout, Ghostery...they indicate an imbalance of control and value. But how useful are they really? And how many people take advantage of these services? Are the numbers growing? They seem so trivial compared to the enormous and still relatively unknown data marketplace.
• If these small steps are unsuccessful at creating change, then where is the real opportunity space for PIE? Is it to create more iAllows? Or is it up to government to create real rules and policies that ensure a balanced economy?
• After the privacy battles that Twitter and other social sites have faced, how involved do we really want government to be? What policies are necessary and which are not?

DON'T KNOW: The privacy conundrum

This article in Wired really gets at the issue of transparency and data collection (or surveillance, depending on your interpretation). 

Sites like Ghostery start to scratch the surface of data analytics. But it goes much deeper than that. Where is the the line between public and private? In the future, will the government need a subpoena for tweets? The more important question is should they?

'There’s an implicit bargain between users and these online services. We trust you with our data and let you use it to serve us ads in exchange for free or cheap services. But trust is rooted in transparency. And right now, there’s no sizable company doing it right when it comes to telling us what data is being stored and how often and how the world’s governments come asking for it.'

Interesting chart on how different companies are approaching this issue.

DON'T KNOW: Open Data - Safer?

With these calls for open data (like the open data initiatives mentioned previously) are we making a safer digital space or a more dangerous one? Are we leaving ourselves open to cyber attacks? What happens when open data falls into the 'wrong' hands?

And how does this relate to Obama's strategy on Cyber-Security?

DON'T KNOW: Several Things

+ With personal information, specifically data that is self-reported, how do we determine what's accurate? Are there any studies done to explore this?
+ Today my team talked about value. Comparing values is pointless, especially with something like personal data which is so fuzzy. Instead we agreed to look at where inbalances exist (where one party feels they aren't being compensated for their 'trade'). But I can't think of any concrete examples of this. Is FB inbalanced? Is twitter?
+ Still don't understand US's official policy on data sharing.

DON'T KNOW: This equals that?

How do we equate value? Is the information Amazon retrieves about our purchase decisions equal to the recommendations they send us about products? Which is more valuable? Can we determine this and if so, how?

DON'T KNOW

• Don't fully understand the policies surrounding information sharing and privacy settings. This seems to differ country to country.
• How successful are sites, like Allow, that pay users for our data? How would we measure this success? Monetarily? Popularity?
• Google Analytics and 'paid-for' analytics tool for enterprise level - the same? different? http://www.thedrum.co.uk/news/2011/02/04/google-poised-launch-new-enterprise-level-paid-analytics-tool
• How does our info sharing compare to Europe's? Asia's?