I wasn’t going to the Surrey under 40s ramblers group. Two days earlier I had trod on my laptop power supply whilst getting out of bed, causing outrageous amounts of cursing and a visible bruise. Eight miles was out of the question. Not wanting to become an intolerable grumbler, I applied my newly invented ‘health and safety’ rule and scrolled down to the next item which had a title of ‘The Mechanised Heart - Sex and Security’. I discovered the location: Finsbury Park; a part of London I didn’t know.
Since it wasn’t raining I went by scooter. Twenty minutes later, I still hadn’t left my house: I was going to be late. I quickly invented another rule, the ‘late Meetup’ rule. The rule was: ‘whenever you choose an event, you still have to go, irrespective of how delayed or late you are: it’s okay to arrive late, because you’re unlikely to be the last there’.
A further twenty minutes later, I was approaching the Elephant and Castle roundabout on my Vespa. Pausing at a set of lights, I realised I had a choice: either head across Blackfriars Bridge, or across London Bridge. I chose London Bridge, went up Moorgate and towards Old Street, which had become a landmark in my consciousness. After Old Street, I would head north towards Angel, passing the Gluten Free bakery, and onto another roundabout close to Highbury and Islington station, to pick my way north and into unknown territory.
As I scootered, I took in the new unfamiliar streets. To me, Islington has always had a reputation of being formidably expensive, yet the streets that I was riding down felt distinctly down at heel: this was a side of Islington I didn’t recognise.
Minutes later, I emerged at a junction. I had last been to the area four and a half years ago to look at a house; the streets were distantly familiar. After riding past Finsbury Park, I found a parking space just around the corner of Manor House tube, another place I had been to; I was connecting the logical map of the tube to the physical geography of the city.
I found the venue, which could only be described as a cozy gatehouse that nestled in the corner of the park. After gingerly stepping into the building, I was enthusiastically greeted by Mary, who I understood was one of the co-organisers. There were around sixteen people, ten of whom were sitting around a table. A deck of PowerPoint slides were being projected.
I had made it just in time for ‘the workshop’ which I quickly gathered was going to be about data, information, security, privacy and politics.
‘Before we begin’ said one of the speakers, ‘we’re going to do an ice breaker activity. I want you to say your name, and something that the Internet doesn’t know about you’. My mind went blank. I was beginning to assume that the ‘internet’ knew everything I was getting up to.
‘My name is Chris. And, erm, the internet doesn’t know that my favourite colour is yellow’.
The first presentation of the day was by members of an organisation called Autonomous Tech Fetish. They spoke of how companies were starting to ‘code’ behaviours and emotions; organisations and governments were gathering lots of data about members of society so they could sell us more stuff and predict our actions. A key phrase was ‘lifestyle marketing’.
After being mildly baffled, we were then asked to stand up; we were going to form ‘an opinion line’.
‘Okay, this end of the room means that you totally agree, and at the other end of the room, you totally disagree. Here’s the first question: you are more worried about your data being looked at by an algorithm than you are by a person’. We all moved, our physical position suggesting our opinion. People on the extremes of the ‘opinion line’ were asked to voice their views. It turned out that I wasn't too worried about my data being processed by an algorithm. My view was that it could lead to better user interfaces.
After four of these questions, it was onto our next activity: we were asked to write on Post-it notes what we knew about the different types of data that are gathered from us in our everyday lives. We wrote about travel data, health data, shopping, internet dating records, and visits to the gym. The picture we made was surprising: it was busy and detailed. I realised that I accepted many aspects of all this data collection. I also realised that the workshop was all about exploring how we might begin to ask questions about these issues and contribute to debates.
I also realised that I found myself in a group that wasn’t so much technical; it was more political. I was surprised that my random Sunday morning journey to Finsbury Park had taken me to a room where we were questioning whether we were happy with the idea that machines and algorithms were trying to predict our every move.
Over lunch, I had a chat with Mary. Mary had travelled all the way from Cambridge to be at the Meetup. It was the second event, and the group had around forty members. The group was ‘interested in the practices, politics and theory of new technologies’ and aimed to share knowledge and skills. I also had a chat with Rachel, who was connected with a local Finsbury Park organisation called Furtherfield that was all about art and digital culture.
After eating my sandwich, I surreptitiously joined a conversation that was occurring between other members. I asked a question: ‘how would you define Libertarianism? I recently went to a Libertarian event and I had no idea what was going on…’
‘Now, for those who don’t know about these things, Libertarianism can actually sound a whole lot like socialism, but, actually, it’s far from it. In a way, you might describe them as anarcho-capitalists, right? That the market rules everything… Some of these big internet companies talk about freedom but what people hear is socialism, but, actually, these guys are pretty right wing’.
The final activity of the day was another Post-it note exercise. This time, it was all about understanding our different attitudes and values. We were presented with a set of images that related to some ideas and were asked to write down our views (or values) about each of them. The stimulus images were about data sharing and transparency, privacy, the use of ‘open data’ and regulation. After we had written down all our views, we tried our best to sort them out into groups. Three of the big groups we came up with related to issues about consent (who is allowed to access our data), power (who controls our data), and regulation (who influences what can be done).
As far as I gathered, one of the ideas behind the workshop was to ‘try things out’; to understand a way to expose important issues that relate to privacy and data to people who didn’t know too much about in-depth technical issues. Two things stuck me about this whole event: the first that it was about outreach and engagement (and learning how to do it well), and secondly, it was also about politics, but it was politics at a level that was real and engaging.
I remember a discussion along the lines of that in society we’re missing a debate and a ‘civic response’ to the issues of privacy and data collection. A recurring point was that, as users of technology, we’re often faced with making a deal that we may rarely understand: we may choose to expose parts of our life to internet companies in exchange for services. I don’t personally know exactly what data that I’m sharing with either the government or with one of the many multinational internet corporations that I regularly interact with. The key point was clear: I should know, and I should be interested.
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