Katja de Vries in a World of Ubiquitous Computing

The place where I do my research: the Center for Law, Science, Technology and Society Studies (Vrije Universiteit Brussel).

My supervisor. Recent publications can be downloaded under "Publications" on the LSTS website or at http://works.bepress.com/serge_gutwirth/doctype.html

My co-supervisor

My other co-supervisor

How a body becomes redefined and transformed through encounters with forces that transgress bodily limits, geographical places and human practices.

What is the legal status of profiles generated by datamining technologies? Intellectual property rights in a world of Autonomic Computing.

Public understandings and expectations of biometric identity systems: a case study of the United Kingdom National Identity Scheme

The regulation of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) in Europe.

The application of the principle of neutrality in law and politics related to the Internet.

Practising Tomorrows Today? Anticipating the worlds of ubiquitous computing. (School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol)

The mechanisms of mutual production between sciences and technologies and cultural, political, economic and legal frameworks (Information Technology and Law Research Centre of the University of Namur, Belgium)

Moves freely between questions of cosmopolitics, human rights, pornography, representation, Deleuze, Latour, genetically modified food & editorial work at the Press Universitaires des France.

Solon Barocas is a doctoral student in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. Recently he has been exploring the epistemological implications and performativity of predicitive models based on large scale data mining.

Research on the intersections of art, philosophy and science and how these intersections can generate productive knowledge about the concepts of time and space in social, cultural and political theory.

Researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a Fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Research on social media, youth practices, tensions between public and private, social network sites, and other intersections between technology and society.

The future of the internet

Peer-reviewed journal on the internet

The Imbroglio-project started in 2001 a led to a series of fruitful interdisciplinary exchanges on the status of law, science, democracy, etc. Contributions by well-known authors like Bruno Latour and Isabelle Stengers & many others (like my supervisors M. Hildebrandt and S. Gutwirth). Chaotic site (what's in a name: imbroglio!) but contains very interesting stuff.

Wired explores how technology affects culture economy and politics. Good source for reading about grotesque technologies, e.g. "Pentagon to Merge Next-Gen Binoculars With Soldiers' Brains".

Freedom to Tinker is hosted by Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy, a research center devoted to the intersection of digital technologies and public life. Here you'll find comment and analysis from the digital frontier, written by the Center's faculty, students, and friends.

Thoughts and observations of a privacy, security and internet researcher and activist

Data protection blog

Michael Zimmer, PhD, on the intersections of ethics & technology, privacy & surveillance, the Web & new media, information & society.

Art project raising questions about smart surveillance cameras (video analytics) & the possibility for , e.g., racial targeting.

Cultural organization based in Amsterdam. Explores the cultural developments that go hand in hand with new technologies and the new technologies that cause cultural development.

Systems that make people's habits, interests, and values visible, so that a user can make better decisions and find opportunities to make positive changes in their lives.

Center for Digital Cultures and Technology, based in Brussels.

"Instead of celebrating this present status quo of idealised self-expression, artistic realism puts the material changeability of current realities into the fore. This realism is not reproductive (mimetic) but productive, providing reflexive and critical means to counter supposedly natural and seemingly unchangeable conditions of the present". Martin Kirchner, Siw Umsonst, Jeronimo Voss,

Jill Magid opens up possibilities of new intimacies with surveillance technologies. In "Art. 12" Magid was commissioned to give the Dutch Secret Service a more "human face".

An independent expertise centre that stimulates innovation and supports knowledge exchange in the field of e-culture in the Netherlands. Virtueel Platform has an international orientation and provides insight in Dutch e-culture for the international cultural community.

Diverted from their original goals, Data Mining tools and Digital Monitoring technologies are used in order to create a series of images of our society, pictured through its data flows. The resulting digital visualizations are based on cartographic principles, and are real-time updated.

Series of workshops with designers, artists & media makers exploring the conditions and possibilities of a merger of digital and physical spaces.

The New Normal brings together thirteen recent artworks that use private information as raw material and subject matter. The concept of privacy, though widely invoked, is difficult to define. The private sphere encompasses domestic spaces, bodies, thoughts, communications, and behaviors

Group of performance artists exploring the interactions & possibilities between new media and theatre; between technology and man.

The MIT Initiative on Technology and Self was founded in 2001 by Sherry Turkle. It created a center for research and reflection on the subjective side of technology and to raise the level of public discourse on the social and psychological dimensions of technological change.

Flemish independent institute supporting scientific, commercial and artistic projects which explore and stimulate the possibilities of the information society. Research addresses: eHealth; New Media; Mobility & Logistics; Enabling technologies; eGovernment

Council is a thinktank, consultancy, accelerator and forecasting group which tries to grasp the territory, the full logistical, business, social and philosophical implications of the Internet of Things

Tinker.it! is a design studio that helps its clients understand the creative potential of new technologies and apply it to interactive experiences through products, spaces and events that bridge the physical and the digital.

A completely independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts

Stiegler moves beyond the language of state sovereignity, citizens and biopower to marketing, consumers and psychopower.

How to be a philosopher in a technological age. Mostly in Dutch and German.

At Freedocumentaries.org, you can stream interesting and provocative documentary films for free.

All seminars take place at the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht

Philips has a vision for the year 2020.

The project is no longer active but is a nice example of a vision wherein the web and the physical world become one.

Is it possible to create a home environment that is aware of its occupants whereabouts and activities? A residential lab at Georgia Tech.

Seamless couplings betwen physicality and virtuality

Comparing Autonomic and Proactive Computing (D. Tennenhouse)

E Horvitz. Machine Learning, Reasoning, and Intelligence in Daily Life: Directions and Challenges (Keynote/Invited talk), Proceedings of Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Ambient Intelligence, Hyderabad, India, January 2007.

U. Fayyad, G. Piatetsky-Shapiro, and P. Smyth (1996), "From Data Mining to Knowledge Discovery in Databases", The AI magazine, vol. 17, no 3, pp. 37-54. [American Association for Artificial Intelligence]]]>

A vision of computer systems that regulate themselves much in the same way our autonomic nervous system regulates and protects our bodies.

Vision of IBM. Seminal article by Jeffrey O. Kephart & David M. Chess.

Mir:ror makes your everyday objects interactive, smart and communicant. Simply affix RFID Ztamps to them and show them to Mir:ror: your bunch of keys will send email to tell someone you

Cutting edge technology at the intersection of computation and the arts.

Indexing the real world using location data for predictive analytics

Influential report of the International Telecommunication Union launching the notion of an "Internet of Things". Free download of the executive summary.

Smart retail surveillance. The power to see what works.

'Big brother' buildings offer less invasive security

Smart surveillance combines many interesting research areas. This project by IBM clarifies the many different areas involved (see e.g. " Video Privacy" and "Face Cataloger"). Moreover this site has plenty of nice pictures and videos to illustrate the applications.

Fitbit is a self surveillance device which automatically counts the steps you take, the amount of burned calories and the quality of your sleep. All is uploaded to the web for further inspection by yourself or for comparison with the Fitbit-data generated by friends.

Managing an adaptive versatile home: "The MavHome Smart Home project is a multi-disciplinary research project at Washington State University and the University of Texas at Arlington focused on the creation of an intelligent home environment. Our approach is to view the smart home as an intelligent agent that perceives its environment through the use of sensors, and can act upon the environment through the use of actuators. The home has certain overall goals, such as minimizing the cost of maintaining the home and maximizing the comfort of its inhabitants. In order to meet these goals, the house must be able to reason about and adapt to provided information."

Unfortunately not all links are up-to-date

Nurturant Technologies in the Domestic Environment: Feeling Comforted, Cared for, and Connected at Home

Finnish multidisciplinary project studying wether consumers are likely to accept the loss of control in smart homes

Rationalizing domestic work.

Norwegian-Swedish movie about a project of the Swedish Home Research Institute in the 1950s to map kitchen routines of single men in rural Norway.

Vox Internet - report

In Spanish

Communication from the Commission to the EU Parliament, The Council, The EU economic and social committee and the Committee of the regions.

The MIAUCE Project aims to investigate and develop techniques to analyse the multi-modal behaviour of users within the context of real applications. The multi-modal behaviour takes the form of eye gaze/fixation, eye blink and body move. We will study and develop techniques that capture and analyse multi-modal behaviour in controlled environments. As a result of such analysis, information will be adapted to the user needs and situation. We will study the usage and effectiveness of our techniques in three different applications. The objective is to develop techniques for human controlled environment interaction, rather than human computer interaction or human human interaction.

If the computer is invisible - how do you fix the error when it makes a wrong decision?

Cybernetics and Surveillance. Artwork at the Brussels Biennal 2008. See also: http://realismworkinggroup.wordpress.com/

Part of "Principia Cybernetica Web", which tries to tackle age-old philosophical questions with the help of the most recent cybernetic theories and technologies.

"Europe will develop a deeper understanding of how appropriate identities and identity management can progress the way to a fair(er) European information society". (The vision of FIDIS, a multidisciplinary and multinational "Network of Excellence" supported by the EU)

Funny site about serious matters in Germany. See the "Online Durchsuchung" decision of the Bundesverfassungsgericht of the 27th of February 2008 and the BKA-law accepted by the Bundestag on the 12th of November 2008 and rejected in the same month by the Bundesrat.

Useful links to EU legislation concerning data protection.

Google celebrating the annual Data Protection Day (January 28).

Statewatch - Monitoring the State and Civil Liberies in Europe

The 'Future Group' is an body set up in January 2007 which makes recommendations on future EU-policies with regard to Freedom, Security and Privacy. Actually, it's especially about security to the detriment of privacy and freedom.

All the relevant Belgian legislation regarding the protection of the personal sphere. In Dutch and Fench. Provided by the "Commissie voor de bescherming van de persoonlijke levenssfeer" (the independent authority for the protection of the personal sphere, established by law in 1992)

An independent authority dealing with the protection of personal data in the Netherlands. Explores in a user-friendly way all the relevant legislation. In Dutch. For the UK equivalent (the "Information Commissioner's Office"): http://www.ico.gov.uk/

ECP.NL is het platform in Nederland waar publiekprivaat wordt samengewerkt aan belangrijke randvoorwaarden en doorbraken rond de digitale economie en samenleving. Dit doet zij d.m.v. werkgroepen en projecten vanuit haar unieke, neutrale positie tussen markt en beleid.

The work undertaken by IPTS is mainly done at the request of other Directorates General of the European Commission. In addition in recent years several assignments have been carried out for the European Parliament.

Second opinion of the European Data Protection Supervisor on the review of Directive 2002/58/EC concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector (Directive on privacy and electronic communications).

Easy way of keeping up-to-date with all that happens on the EU level

On the 15th of December 2005 the European Parliament adopted the proposal to store communication data for a period of "not less than six months and not more than two years from the date of the communication" (art. 6). It is argued that data retention is necessary to combat terrorism. Those who want to enforce their copyrights would of course also love to peek into the stored communication data.

Directive 2002/58/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 July 2002 concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector (Directive on privacy and electronic communications)

Mijnprivacy.nl

NLnet foundation financially supports organizations and people that contribute to an open information society. It funds software, events, educational activities --and more. The procedure is fast and open to anyone.

Why changing your IP address while browsing? Because your real IP address can be easily tracked by websites and ISPs and your browsing behaviors can be revealed to others. Any web resource you access can gather personal information about you through your unique IP address.

Stanford's "Center for Internet and Society" (http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/) made a wiki with a list of free technologies aimed at empowering Internet users to gain better control over their data (e.g., "software allowing for anonymous surfing, plug-ins that reveal who is tracking you online, and improvements in browser security").

The privacy-friendly alternative to Google

Greg Linden, Brent Smith, and Jeremy York, "Amazon.com Recommendations. Item-to-Item Collaborative Filtering", Jan-Feb 2003, IEEE Computer Society, Internet Computing.

Written by Richard MacManus, founder of ReadWriteWeb, an interesting blog that provides Web Technology news, reviews and analysis.

Interesting post by Alex Iskold on ReadWriteWeb.

Wikipedia entry with some nice links.

Good old school civil rights activism. Healthy distrust towards the police, secret services and the state in general.

Reflections upon copyright-piracy.

Internet law and technology explained by IT-lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet. Practical reflections upon legal day-to-day problems one may encounter in cyberspace.

SOLV Advocaten is law firm specialised in technology, media and communication. Their weblog section is a good spot to keep up-to-date with the developments in the field.

Magazine over maatschappij en internet

Kom op voor digitale rechten

"netzpolitik.org ist ein Blog und eine politische Plattform fur Freiheit und Offenheit im digitalen Zeitalter. Thema sind die wichtigen Fragestellungen der digitalen Welt und wir zeigen Wege auf, wie man sich selbst mit Hilfes des Netzes fur digitale Freiheiten engagieren kann

Jeff Jonas and Jim Harper, "Effective Counterterrorism and the Limited Role of Predictive Data Mining", Policy Analysis 584, CATO Institute, 11 December 2006.

Second Life contends to be a space of unlimited possibilities and freedom. Yet, all too often, the inhabitants of SL simply mirror their real life: people walk, talk, love and earn money; they build houses and buy clothes. Gazira Babeli shows that SL has it own spatio-temporal limits and possibilities.

RMB City (by artist Cao Fei, born 1978, lives and works in Beijing) is an online art community in the virtual world of Second Life. This project is an experiment exploring the creative relationship between real and virtual space, and is a reflection of China's urban and cultural explosion.

Ubicomp is the premier outlet for novel research contributions that advance the state of the art in the design, development, deployment, evaluation and understanding of ubiquitous computing systems.

Emile Aarts will replace the Vision of "Ambient Intelligence" with that of "Synergetic Prosperity"

Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain from July 20 to July 21, 2009.

GikII 4th Edition, a two day workshop on the intersections between law, technology and popular culture. The chairs of the event are Joris van Hoboken, Doctoral Researcher at the Institute for Information Law, Ian Brown, Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, Andres Guadamuz, Co-Director, SCRIPT Law and Technology Centre at the University of Edinburgh and Lilian Edwards, Professor of Internet Law, Sheffield University. IViR is hosting GikII in partnership with Creative Commons Netherlands. There will be no workshop fee. Lunch, coffee and a conference dinner will be arranged free of charge. We will limit registration to 40 participants, so register early!! Preference will be given to attendees who are providing a paper. GikII - Not for the Lulz!? GikII is a forum for the intersection of law, technology and popular culture. After previous editions in London, Edinburgh and Oxford, GikII has gained enough steam to hit the continent. Topics covered at the last editions included killer robots, virtual property, copyright online, the many lives and deaths of privacy, fandom, avatar culture, Roman slaves and knitted Daleks. Last year

Lift is a series of events built around a community of pioneers who get together in Europe and Asia to explore the social implications of new technologies. Each conference is a chance to turn innovation into opportunities by anticipating the major shifts ahead, and meet the people who drive them.

Behavioural targeted advertising

Article in Dutch (by P. Olsthoorn, in: "Emerce")

Dutch judgement on "Tell a friend" viral marketing

Testimony on Behavioral Advertising by Ed Felten (Princeton)

Publisher of the journal "Mediaforum"

Smart software recognizes musical fingerprint in order to enforce copyrights on music.

Dutch parliamentary report on copyrights, 2009.

"....exploring technologies permitting to endow objects with a personal history so that they become different as we interact with them and to learn from one another, thus creating an ecosystem in perpetual evolution".