This year have been full of challenges involving work, studies and family. I’ve been focused on my diploma and almost forgot the real meaning of all of it. Tomorrow, I’ll be an qualified engineer, working in a big society, a nobody lost in the middle of a massive army of my clones. When looking in the mirror, life seems so short. I may have fooled myself, deciding not to follow the dead-end tracks I’ve been putted on. I’ve fought against adversity to become what I am but somehow I do feel void today.

But I remember those countless nights I’ve spend watching the stars, those precious moments shared with people I miss, the sunsets I’ve watched with my fiancée and all of the times I’ve thought would never end. And I know that reckless work is the only way I’ll spend more time doing things I really love (as paradoxical as it could seem).

So I’ll continue working in my field, trying to make science progress as much as possible, with renewed passion and interest day after days. I’ll try spending more time with my beloved family as those three long years of intensive work spread us apart. I’ll involve myself in associations and public interest actions to help luckless people to find their way as others helped me to find myself when I’ve been lost.

I’d like to take a chance to thank them here, those folks who influenced me in my everyday behaviour, in the way I perceive the world I’m living in. We may have been friends, family or lovers. We may also had professor and student relation. We could have shared a short talk or event a silence in which we understood each other.

All of those sparkles of humanity, those tiny drops of hope are what I’ll live my life for, today and forever.

Thank you.

Everything started with the iPhone. This tiny shiny have been a great
revolution in the everyday approach of interfaces and user’s experience. Freed
of it’s classical interfaces, keyboard and mousey per se, the iPhone
created an precedent in the way people, especially youngsters, understand the
websites and conceive the web.

After that, came the netbook revolution, with their incredible ease-of-use,
autonomy and mobility. They gave everyone opportunity to surf the web more or
less everywhere. Their cheap price also permitted to spread all around the
place.

The most recent form factor ready to invade our life is the
internet-tablet. Even if tablets have already been pushed on the market
round’ 2005 (remember that Windows XP Tablet edition?), their high price
and low functionnality have been, at the time, a major break against their
spread. But since Apple, and it’s charismatic CEO, have decided that Thou shall
use a Tablet to surf upon thy Internet everyone is ready to sell their soul
to leave a fingerprint on an iPad.

The digital generation, the one that is currently between 3 and 15, also
called “Z Generation”, had all of their life surrounded by numerical technology
while mine, also known as the “Y Generation”, known the transition between an
analogic and paper based civilisation towards a numeric and globally cold
organisation.

Thus, could we consider that those poor toddlers and children will only get
their aseptic iPad collection and concious-less robots to remind them of their
childhood? Will they be kept away of old dust covered books with which they
could have imagined their world by themselves?

I do think so. And two recent pretty much viral videos have convinced
me.

A little girl, interacting with a iPad. The tablet seems even too easy for
her to use. She learn to use it in less than a minute:

The second one is the interface demonstration of “Alice in Wonderland” with the brand new animated version of the original drawings:

Can one kid out there choose for the original book? I seriously doubt…

So are librarians an endangered specie? I guess.

Nevertheless I believe that most of computers and internet terminals got different uses as the roles of people of the internet are clarifying.

• One type are people who are producing information and doing so in a much more professional way than it ever been. They are using computers are we indent them for a bit of time now. A keyboard and a screen, bigger and bigger as time pass. This is the big old kernel of journalists sitting in the redaction of prestigious press names like the NY Times or Le Monde.
• Another is the mobile reporter, with a tiny netbook or even his cellphone. His role is to gather information and to spread it as fast as possible. For example, people using twitter to report events are part of those.
• And the last one is the consumer. Those are consuming information as commonly as they are breathing. And they do not need any complex interface for their tasks…

And tools are trying to reflect those changes of habits. People not being emitter of information do not need a physical keyboard. At most they’ll type 140 characters (A Twit’s length).

People becoming more an more passive, interfaces might tend to shrink to nothing but virtual “Next” and “Back” buttons…

My twitter.

For a while now, your data have been stored on computers you know nothing about. Stylish web 2.0 interfaces made the upload of information about yourself easy as a click. Can this comportment be a bit dangerous? How did we became addicted to gMail? I’ll show how a good marketing plan can make you give your data to anyone and how can such a comportment be dangerous.

How your data become under control:

The “Good Ol’ license Golden age” phase

• Also known as: “Pay if you want the use of a program you bastard!”
• Products currently in this phase: Microsoft Office
• Predictable Risks: To be tied to a specific program
• Typical gibberish: “This version is better than any other we already made” (and told you was perfect…)

You got your data stored on a computer you are in charge of. If you want to access the files, you’re supposed to pay for a program’s license that will let you open and modify them. Changing the confidentiality of a information is a voluntary process which implies to send an email or to print the document you want to publish. But this time is about to change thanks to the web 2.0 tools and the social networking.

The “There is gonna be a Like-You-Never-Seen-Before service in X days, and it’s reserved for a very few people” phase

• Also known as: “You are ready to kill for that. And you’re gonna do so.”
• Products currently in this phase: Any service in the so-called “Private Beta”, Google Voice Translate
• Predictable Risks: To give your email address
• Typical gibberish: “That’s it! A brand new innovation is gonna make everything else so web 1.0! Everything is so easy when you use it: You can pilot a space shuttle with a single toothpick! No, sincerely, this is incredible!”

You’re now a victim of the “Buzz” effect. Everyone is trying to draw the sheets of the hype blogosphere on them. Thus, they dispense very little information on what they propose precisely and dispense new accounts at a very slow pace. They only want to be talked about and to make people ready to sell their souls to get an access to their site. In place of their souls, they collect email addresses.

Gathering such information is a good way to create a well vending address book to marketeers. Most of the time they also ask you to give several details about yourself, from the name of your favorite movie to the number of your library card.

The example of Google Voice Translate is pretty efficient. Everyone want to break the language barrier humankind have been confronted against since the Babel tower; even if it include a perpetual authorization to Google to record ever word you say…

The “Hey, why not using this nice service we give you for free?” phase

• Also known as: “You wanted this so hard we decided to make it free because we are philanthropists.”
• Product currently in this phase: Google Wave
• Predictable Risks: Your real mail address (not the trash one) is given by your friend to possibly anyone.
• Typical gibberish: “Hey pal, I’ve got a invitation for this brand new thing. I’ll drop you one by tonight.”

Since people have been using the brand new shiny service and convinced the rest of the world that their life is spoiled if they don’t get an account on this server ASAP, every one is trying to gain access to this thing. And voila! Magically the providers of such a service begin to deliver their service for free, at a pretty large scale. The newcomers can now use it as they always wanted, and start to pour in all of the informations they think could be way more attractive trough the prism of the better-than-anything service.

The “Oh my God, it’s full of stars” phase

• Also known as: “Please, take every piece of my privacy and my identity (and my soul).”
• Product currently in this phase: Google Docs, till recently gMail
• Predictable Risks: You pile up everything about your life on a server you know nothing about.
• Typical gibberish: “You’re using this old piece of software to do what? Nah, use THIS! It’s much better!”

You like IT. Sincerely, you manage every part of your life with it. You gave it the photos of your marriage before burning your old crappy scrapbooked photo album to ashes. You created an account for you wife, your children, every pet you owe and every member of you family including old aunt Betsie.

You are confident in yourself, especially when less skilled people (poor of them) ask you where to find a nice and sleek on-the-web thingy to manage their entire collection of puppies photos, and you affirmed that THIS is the best they could find. You become a reference in IT stuff and people are pretty impressed by how your are ready to sell a technology that is not yours. You don’t even get a single penny when doing so. But you love IT. Really.

The “Ooopsie! Those informations are not meant to be published.” phase

• Also known as: “Our confidential policy has changed; please check that box without reading anything because it’s boring.”
• Products currently in this phase: Google Buzz, Facebook
• Predictable Risks: Everything you wanted to be kept secret become public. Confidential status corruption.
• Typical gibberish: “But, How could you betray me like this? We were BFF”

You became comfortably numb, putting all of you life on a web server and one day you realize that things you put there confidently, talking about your intimate problems (yep those one too), the list of people you talk the most with etc… had became fully public. The examples are many and most of the time a correction patch is issued quickly with the excuses of the company. BUT your precious confidential data have been compromised to public visibility. This is the kind of event that can’t be undone. Thanks to this, companies a starting to fire employees because of their Facebook status.

The “What the eek are you really doing with my stuff?” phase

• Also known as: “I’m going to shove this banana up your a** Zuckerberg!”
• Products currently in this phase: Every F*cking Google Service, Facebook and many others…
• Predictable Risks: You can’t even imagine…
• Typical gibberish: “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”

The new era of in-the-cloud document and web 2.0 services has come to a point where confidentiality is no more a quality criteria. Services became more open, mostly free and are just waiting for your photos, thoughts and mails. But those sirens are eager for you data and your privacy is not even the key element.

The Open Data Challenge:

We’ve seen the transition of private local data to on-the-web mostly public data. But the real challenge is to know what founders of companies offering “free” services are ready to do to you personal data. Many free services are designed to be hard to quit. They offer a nice design, over-the-top ergonomics and are completely free. But using a service without paying money doesn’t mean your not paying at all.

Recently gMail introduced a new feature called Buzz. With this thing you are said to be more reactive about news, closer to your friends interests and able to share your thoughts about more or less everything. This feature had a major flaw. It introduced a security hole in the google – globally visible – profile or every user, showing the people they were most in contact with. Some journalists had their sources discovered, some cheaty husband got their mistress before their wife eyes in their list and so on. Isn’t it a pretty high price to pay, just to have a free webmail?

Moreover, are we really sure of the use of our private data? I’ve check recently my gMail account. It got more or less every mail I’ve sent since april 2004. Ten years of my life are fully available on Google’s servers. They just have to come and pick what they want from my intimate mail with my fiancée, the ones I’ve exchange with other girls before, many thing about my health issues and more. Same thing with Facebook, Google Docs and many others. Business is not anymore based on license subscription since most of programs are free. They are based on your will to give your data as a reward.

What if tomorrow gMail become unavailable, or worst, chargeable? How will you get your precious data back? How much are you ready to pay for them?

Now what?

Many providers own today your online data. We can ask ourselves two questions:

• How long these informations will be kept at their current confidentiality level?

Every day, a new example of confidentiality flaw rise upon the internet. The last one being Google’s Buzz, the one before, Facebook. How long will it take before people realise the growing danger of such failures? It depends on several factors such as youth comportment towards the internet (mostly due to education) or media coverage of such problems. Thanks to the chaos theory we can be sure of one thing: Every piece of information sent to the network will become public one day.

• How can these informations be used by those companies?

Many are still interrogative about the real utility of these personal data. Every scenario possible have already be imagined. The only element known today is that those informations can last for ever on their side without you being able to do anything.

So we’ve got permanent data you can’t control, stored somewhere you don’t know that will become public one day. I’m pretty sure I’m not anymore the most feared by such a situation…

As Zuckerberg said, the privacy is over. People seem to be ready to give away their privacy in exchange of an tool. But by the time they’ll realize the real impact of this, it will probably be too late…