October 13, 2004
Paul Dourish, UC Irvine
Privacy, Security and Risk and
Danger and Secrecy and Trust and Morality and Identity and Power: Understanding
Collective Information Practices
Abstract
The Internet is becoming a dangerous place.
Threats of all sorts abound. Virus attacks threaten to compromise the operation
of computer systems, and spyware threatens to compromise our personal privacy.
Accordingly, privacy and security are active topics of investigation from a wide
range of perspectives - institutional, legislative, technical, interactional
and more. In this presentation, I'll argue that we can understand privacy and
security only by looking at the broader social and cultural contexts within which
it is embedded. Privacy and security are difficult concepts to grapple with precisely
because they are caught up in larger collective rhetorics and practices of risk,
danger, secrecy, trust, morality, identity and more.
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