Never mind the technology, where’s the learning?

I’m getting through Born Digital rather slowly as work kicks in this week, and have just read the chapter on privacy. In this chapter Palfrey and Gasser comment on parents, “unwittingly creating problems for their children who are born digital. … A latch-key kid who carries a cell phone with an RFID chip in it might have an identity that’s far more extensive than the Digital Native who is further off the grid …The parents of children who are tracked by such devices no doubt mean well, but they are contributing data points to their children’s digital identity”.

Yet such a description is already far behind the times, mobile phone providers in the US are required by law to be able to locate 67% of callers within 100 metres and 95% of callers within 300 metres. As a result GPS capability has been built into most new mobile phones, although it is not necessarily easy to automatically track people using this system.

However, by putting information together via Google, people can be found. In one dramatic story reported today, a nine year old girl, who had been kidnapped, was traced using the GPS capability of her mobile phone, and cross referencing the co-ordinates in Google.

In this case, the digital footprint was used for good, but of course this might not always be the case. Palfrey and Gasser’s argument rests less with the immediate, but more with the accumulation of data over time. They point out that this digital dossier includes information that we not only have no control over, but also be completely unaware of its existence. The role of the teacher in all this is to educate children about privacy and protecting their digital identity, and this includes critical awareness of what technology can do and how it is being or might be used.

Tags: JohnPalfrey, Urs Gasser, Born Digital, privacy, e-safety