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"Assessment of Personal and Social Implications of the Use of Persona Technology"
This project will refine the concept of the digital persona, grounding it in social theory and empirical field work. In this way it is possible to test assumptions about human behaviour that more technical approaches assume and generate a rich cross-disciplinary dialogue that will further our collective understanding of how agents can be used successfully in everyday life. It will explore how people experience the relationship between their digital and real-world persona, and it will elaborate this relationship in particular with respect to issues of personal control and privacy. The research will formulate design principles for guiding the development of communications agents and identity technologies more generally. It is part of ongoing research into human-centred design and access policy issues in digital communications that is being carried out by the researchers.
Research into the personal and social dimensions of communications agents occurs at the intersection of three initially disparate but increasingly interrelated fields of enquiry: software agents, persona/identity construction and privacy protection. Each of these three areas is considered in turn, highlighting the major contributions of each to this research project and the current gaps that still need to be addressed:
Agents
Growing out of the Artificial Intelligence field, there is currently much research focused on constructing "autonomous" agents designed to assist individuals in a variety of communications activities. A key debate centres on whether agents should be treated as social actors with human-like characteristics or whether they should be viewed ideally as transparent mechanisms under direct user control. (See Maes, Nass, Schneiderman, Lanier, Suchman). This project adopts the latter view.
The work closest to the proposed project is that of the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) initiative being developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Taking privacy goals as a central feature, it proposes an agent architecture, involving possibly multiple personae, in the context of individuals dealing with web-based services. However, it does not address interpersonal communications, which this project will do.
Persona/identity construction
This is a currently burgeoning field in the social sciences, drawing inspiration from Erving Gofffman's seminal work, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959. The current work that is closest to this project is that of Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, 1997. However, while Turkle focuses on the more 'exotic' personas found in MUDs and the like, our project will look at the more routine identity creations of everyday domestic and workplace interactions.
Privacy
The notion of privacy protection has evolved significantly this century, from "the right to be left alone" formulation of the classic Warren and Brandeis judgement of the 1890's, to the "informational self-determination" ideal of the fair information practices that underpin all contemporary legislation (including Bill 54 currently before the Canadian Parliament). Based on the premise of centrally administered data files, this is view of privacy is being criticized as increasingly inadequate for dealing with communicative acts and the potential for multiple identities, pseudonymity and even authenticated anonymity.
Growing out the privacy field, but addressing directly each of the others mentioned above, is the contemporary notion of the 'digital persona' or "model of an individual's public personality based on data and maintained by transactions, and intended for use as a proxy for an individual" (Clarke, Roger: "The Digital Persona and its Application to Data Surveillance "The Information Society, 10,2, June 1994)
However, there has been little work done so far either to explore this formulation empirically, or to adopt it as the basis of systems designed for everyday use. This project takes up "digital persona" as its core concept and proposes to conduct just such an investigation of its potential.
References of the researchers:
Clement, Andrew. "Considering Privacy in the Development of Multi-media Communications", Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), special issue on NetWORKing, 1994, pp. 67-87. Reprinted in the anthology, Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices, Kling, R. (editor), 2nd ed., Academic Press, San Diego, pp. 383-406.
Clement, A. and Wagner, I., "Fragmented Exchange: Disarticulation and the need for regionalized communication spaces", Fourth European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Stockholm, Sweden, Sept. 10-15, 1995, pp. 33-49.
Moore, Gale. "Sharing faces, places and spaces" in Video-mediated Communication, edited by K. Finn, A.J. Sellen and S. Wilbur. Mahwah, N.J.:Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc., pp. 301-321. (In particular section on "Ethics and privacy", pp. 306-308)
Stalder, Felix; Clement, Andrew (1999). Exploring Policy Issues of Electronic Cash: The Mondex Case. Canadian Journal of Communication Vol. 24, No. 2 pp. 261-288,