On this episode of Spark: Post-Privacy, Facebook Psychology, and Open Data. Click below to listen to the whole show, or download the MP3 (runs 54:00).
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:25 — 49.9MB)
You can also listen to individual stories below.
Making Music From Electricity Flow Data
Have you ever looked at the flow of electricity between New Brunswick and PEI and thought, “Wow, I wonder if I could turn that into music?” Yeah, us either. But Peter Rukavina did. With some technical skill and a few free web services, Peter was able to turn somewhat dull information about inter-province electricity flow into a novel and compelling mashup. (Runs 8:50)
Play audio:
- Peter Rukavina
- Peter’s blog post Hear the Energy Flow: Pachube + SoundCloud Mashup
- Peter’s electricity mashup (will work in Google Chrome or Safari only)
- Full uncut version of interview with Peter Rukavina
- Peter’s annotated bootleg interview on SoundCloud
- SoundCloud track “Stand still” by weathercast
Open Data and Mass-Participation
We’ve talked a lot lately about the “Internet of Things” – the idea of everyday objects communicating with the Internet. One of the sites Peter Rukavina used to make his mashup is called Pachube. It’s a platform that allows anyone to post and share real time data from the environment. So, maybe that’s your energy use, or the temperature in different parts of a city. Or as is currently the case in Japan, Geiger counter radiation readings. Usman Haque is the founder and CEO of Pachube, which he designed ultimately as a way of structuring participation. (Runs 11:18)
Play audio:
- Usman Haque
- Pachube
- Pachube.blog post Crowdsourcing + Open Data evolving into commercial opportunity
- Full uncut version of interview with Usman Haque
The Psychology of Facebook
Many of us have made our own unscientific observations about our friends on Facebook – noting who posts the most photos of their kid or who has their location geo-tagged so you know they’re in the Loblaws one minute and at the bus stop the next. But recently released studies have shown that scientists have been using Facebook for actual scientific observations. Spark contributor Dan Falk sheds light on one of the more interesting findings – the significant difference between the way that men and women use the site. (Runs 9:23)
Play audio:
- The Facebook Research Group at University of Guelph
- Dr. Michael Stefanone
- Dan Falk
Living Post-Privacy
Many of us are becoming more comfortable living publicly online, and Christian Heller is an extreme example. For the past year, Christian has been living completely transparently, posting everything about his life on a public wiki. He calls it “post-privacy” and Spark contributor Jonathan Gifford spoke to Christian to find out why he’s doing it. Living in such a transparent way brings up all kinds of interesting questions about privacy so we called up Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart who recently released a report on online tracking and targeting. (Runs 16:43)
Play audio:
- Christian Heller’s wiki and other projects (all in German)
- Christian Heller speaking about post-privacy (in English) at the Lift Conference
- Spark blog post Survey Results: Online Privacy and Your Queasy Button
- Full uncut version of interview with Jennifer Stoddart
Additional Links
- Electronic Frontier Foundation’s browser tracking tool Panopticlick
- APM music used in this episode
Spark Podcast
You can receive Spark automatically by subscribing to any of our totally free podcast feeds:
- Free weekly podcast (Subscribe in iTunes)
- Free weekly podcast + additional blog-only content (Subscribe in iTunes)
- Free weekly podcast (low bandwidth version)
For more information (and instructions) visit cbc.ca/podcasting
Wow! your podcasts are really interesting and inspiring! thanks! enjoyed especially that piece about "Making Music From Electricity Flow Data"
thanks!
Hi Nora, have you ever considered adding chapter markers to the Spark podcast file? As someone who listens to the Spark Extra feed, I usually skip the interviews I have heard before – but there is no easy way to do this (at least on my 2G Nano). It would be nice if I could just click the 'next' button to move to the next segment.
Keep up the great work at Spark!
Hi, TM. Indeed, this is a request that we get from time to time. I agree, chapters would be great, but as it stands, CBC Radio One's podcast publishing tool doesn't support them.
I know that some of the CBC Radio 3 podcasts are available as chaptered AAC files, but they are on a different system.
Related to Pachube, wondering if you've heard of sen.se ? Looks like an interesting wrapper around sites like Pachube, that also enables citizen applications to be built on Pachube-like data streams.
Haven’t heard of sen.se, but will definitely check it out.
I’m also keen to play around w/ http://scraperwiki.com/ for the kind of cloud-based scraping Peter did locally.
I have to point out that using your browser or third party password software/services to create and track secure passwords is not good advice. There's plenty of nefarious advice to be had with a quick google search of "browser password file hack", or similar. I don't recall the exact reference, but I recently read on one of the tech news sites that there were new techniques to snag password files. There are no shortcuts here. It requires memory work and diligence.
Use mixed case, numerals, and punctuation characters, minimum 8 chars. That's a good start. There's not much point for me to try to explain password best practices, just look it up… but fair warning: you may have to learn something. There's no way around that.
Fairly new to Spark, have heard a few squibs on digital privacy lately, but here's a show idea I hope you haven't done: privacy implications of cloud services (or lack thereof).
Read this and weep: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/microsoft-w…
They're all doing it. Cloud services that is, Amazon, Google, MS, etc. And handing over data? Very likely. There is anecdotal evidence. A judge in New York state appeals court recently came out on the record saying that American law enforcement agencies were gathering evidence against American citizens without judicial or other oversight.
Even worse though, Apple is launching cloud services and hence everybody will suddenly think it's the greatest thing ever, magical, and a must have at any price. i.e. the greatest threat to privacy since even the Internet was commercialized will now be a "must have". I couldn't agree with Stoddart more: lack of oversight in private enterprise is a greater threat than government processes, where there at least is a modicum of checks and balances. What about cross border jurisdictional issues? Yikes. It's an episode that practically writes itself.
I'm thinking that 'cloud computing' is the greatest threat to privacy'…handing one's data over to a corporate entity…NOT !