Week 7: The Author vs the Information Society

Brian Martin discusses in the 3rd chapter of his book 'Information Liberation' the reasons behind Intellectual Property and the regulations associated to it as well as the strategies for change in the field.

Patents, copyright and other legislation are created to protect the authors right to it and to guarantee economical support or benefit to endorse further work. But who support (or benefit from) the intellectual property the most? The most powerful governments and the largest corporations.

With technological developments and the emergence of World Wild Web, the control over spreading intellectual property is losing its point. The change is needed and the crowd against the constraints growing. Martin gives his perspective to intellectual property and its alternative:

"The alternative to intellectual property is straightforward: intellectual products should not be owned. That means not owned by individuals, corporations, governments, or the community as common property. It means that ideas are available to be used by anyone who wants to."

His strategy to change consists of following steps:

• Change thinking
  
• Expose the costs
• Reproduce protected work
  
• Openly refuse to cooperate with intellectual property
• Promote non-owned information
  
• Develop principles for crediting intellectual work

These points are rather radical all together. I agree to the idea that the way we think of things and therefore frame them makes change in legislation and it is a way to go around the property. Exposing the costs makes sense to me, it would help to understand the way things really work in the system and is in the interest of reducing the legitimacy of the world intellectual property system.

The point of reproducing the protected work freely, openly and with no respect to it, to show ones confrontation to the system may be understood. I like the approach that if you do it hidden and secretly, you accept the system but violate the rules whereas with free and not hidden copying of copyrighted property one shows disapprobation of the system. As much as I like the approach I would not start fighting for it on my own.

Promoting non-owned information and developing the measures to credit intellectual work are softer points and make sense to take into consideration. I find it important to credit the work of the creator, whereas I evaluate the free distribution of ideas and intellectual products.

Week 6-2: Social Engineering

A Social Engineering Case from Mitnick's "The Art of Deception" (Ch.2)

Private Investigator at Work
Three calls were made by the same person: a private investigator we'll call Oscar Grace. Grace had a new client, one of his first. A lady planning on asking for a divorce from her husband but had a problem with their money and savings being moved to an unknown account. Mr Grace had to find out whereto.

The First Call: Kim Andrews
"National Bank, this is Kim. Did you want to open an account today?"
"Hi, Kim. I have a question for you. Do you guys use CreditChex?"
"Yes."
"When you phone in to CreditChex, what do you call the number you give them--is it a 'Merchant ID'?"

A pause; she was weighing the question, wondering what this was about and
whether she should answer. The caller quickly continued without missing a beat:
"Because, Kim, I'm working on a book. It deals with private investigations."
"Yes," she said, answering the question with new confidence, pleased to be helping a writer.
"So it's called a Merchant ID, right?"
"Uh huh."
"Okay, great. Because I wanted to make sure I had the lingo right. For the book. Thanks for your help. Good-bye, Kim."

The Second Call: Chris Talbert
"National Bank, New Accounts, this is Chris."
"Hi, Chris. This is Alex," the caller said. "I'm a customer service rep with CreditChex. We're doing a survey to improve our services. Can you spare me a couple of minutes?"

She was glad to, and the caller went on:
"Okay - what are the hours your branch is open for business?" She answered, and continued answering his string of questions.
"How many employees at your branch use our service?"
"How often do you call us with an inquiry?"
"Which of our 800-numbers have we assigned you for calling us?"
"Have our representatives always been courteous?"
"How's our response time?"
"How long have you been with the bank?"
"What Merchant ID are you currently using?"
"Have you ever found any inaccuracies with the information we've provided you?"
"If you had any suggestions for improving our service, what would they be?"
And:
"Would you be willing to fill out periodic questionnaires if we send them to your branch?"
She agreed, they chatted a bit, the caller rang off, and Chris went back to work.

The Third Call: Henry McKinsey
"CreditChex, this is Henry McKinsey, how can I help you?"
The caller said he was from National Bank. He gave the proper Merchant ID and then gave the name and social security number of the person he was looking for information on. Henry asked for the birth date, and the caller gave that, too. After a few moments, Henry read the listing from his computer screen.
"Wells Fargo reported NSF in 1998, one time, amount of $2,066." NSF – non sufficient funds - is the familiar banking lingo for checks that have been written when there isn't enough money in the account to cover them.
"Any activities since then?"
"No activities."
"Have there been any other inquiries?"
"Let's see. Okay, two of them, both last month. Third United Credit Union of Chicago." He stumbled over the next name, Schenectady Mutual Investments, and had to spell it. "That's in New York State," he added.

Countermeasures against Social Engineering

Kevin Mitnick, in his book 'The Art of Intrusion', gives a list of countermeasures against social engineering attacks inside the company. It is important to motivate the employees to adhere to the protocols. A series of coordinated efforts include:

• Developing clear, concise security protocols that are enforced consistently throughout the organization
• Developing security awareness training
• Developing simple rules defining what information is sensitive
• Developing a simple rule that says that whenever a requestor is asking for a restricted action (that is, an action that involves interaction with computer-related equipment where the consequences are not known), the requestor’s identity must be verified according to company policy
• Developing a data classification policy
• Training employees on ways to resist social engineering attacks
• Testing your employee’s susceptibility to social engineering attacks by conducting a security assessment

The list gives suggestions to the company - what can they do to reduce the chance of an employee (and therefore the company) becoming a victim of social engineer. What measures could there be just of the human, not technical, aspect. Also in the same book Mitnick gives guidelines to Training. From there I would bring out the following that should be indicated to any person and computer user:

• Aim to establish a sense in the trainees that they will feel foolish if manipulated by a social engineering attack after the training.

It seems strange but at the same time.. it could give an impact, a little fear of becoming the fool one to fall into the trap.

• Modify organization politeness norms — It’s okay to say “no”!

I find this an important one as I think one should really give out minimum of information concerning any kind of personal data or any passwords or codes and feel free to say "no".

Week 6-1: Hacktivism

Hacker culture has given many useful solutions to the computer users and has helped developing many open-source applications, free software and more. This is the clearly positive side to the public, but there is a darker side to it where it is hard to define if it stays in the good boundries. Whether hacktivism should include directly malicious methods like systems cracking, website defacement and DDoS attack, is debated even inside the movement. Both opinions do exist.

One example of hacktivism through DDoS attack:

In August 2009, the Melbourne International Film Festival was forced to shut down its website after DDoS attacks by Chinese vigilantes, in response to Rebiya Kadeer's planned guest appearance, the screening of a film about her which is deemed "anti-China" by Chinese state media, and strong sentiments following the July 2009 Ürümqi riots. Rebiya Kadeer is a business woman and political activist figthing for the rights of Uyghur minority group living in North-West China, who by Kadeers words are subject to systematic oppression by the Chinese government.

The hackers booked out all film sessions on its website, and replaced festival information with the Chinese flag and anti-Kadeer slogans. Spokeswomanof the festival, Asha Holmes said all sessions on the site had posted "sold-out" messages. She said it was not immediately known whether the rush on tickets was real. But when the bookings were traced to Chinese websites it soon became clear they were fake. Internet technicians have been unable to keep up with the speed of "shopping carts" filling once the sessions have been cleared of the fake bookings, she said.

The 19th Century Surrogate Travel

While reading the second chapter of Virtual Art: from Illusion to Immersion I witnessed with pleasure that my thoughts of surrogate travel discussed in my earlier post connects delightfully to the history of painted illusions by Oliver Grau. From frescoes and wall paintings in historical buildings the story gets to the development of giving stronger illusional effect. In the end of 18th century the panorama view was invented by Robert Barker.

By the means of traditional painting the panorama has been the most sophisticated 360 degree illusion space crated forming an optical illusion. The first on purpose Panorama (1972) showed publicly in London was a two-storied circular house built for illusional experience. Inside the building there was 360 degree painting with upper and lower edges not to be seen to the observer, as well as the light from above which was illuminating the picture in a way that it seemed to be the source of the light itself. The Panorama became enormously popular among the citizens and a new job was started - panorama painters. (Grau, 58, 62)

Painting panoramas from cities became so popular that patents were released and industrial production started. The panoramas toured in several cities in Europe and North-America and depicted great scenery, well-known, distant or exotic places. The fact that the panoramas were touring around and were reachable for the entrance fee that was a fraction of what a travel would have cost, made them "economical surrogate for travel" (Grau, 69, note 178) or a "travel with the eye." (Grau, 69)

In the end of the 18th and at the beginning of 19th century travelling to distance places and other continent was extremely time consuming in comparison to nowadays, as well as expencive and therefore unthinkable to great part of the population. The invention of circular painting and panoramas gave the citizens surrogate travel feeling being in their own town. The illusion of being in another place may be compared to the effect that Google Streetview gives us in the 21th century - no cost, no time spent to get to another geographical point in the World.

Virtual Art: from Illusion to Immersion

Artists, scientists, scholars and researchers that present innovative discourse on the convergence of art, science and technology - MIT Press publishes their texts and has published a book called Virtual Art: from Illusion to Immersion, written by Oliver Grau. Computer graphics, video, interactive art, animations, Internet art, sound installations, digital poetry are some disciplines of the genre called media art or new media art. With the tools available today dazzling illusions and feeling of immersion can be produced.

Interactive media has given new dimensions to the idea of an image; what looks like an image on the first glimpse may give a "multisensory interactive experience with a time frame." It is often complicated to make difference between the original and an illusion of it while the time and room parameters are subject to manipulations. The latter makes the environments excellent for experiences and simulations. (Grau, 7)

Using new design and technological capabilities, virtual reality can be composed with unique feeling of time and space, producing the illusion of really being in another place at another time, being immersed. I agree with Grau that virtual art is not always directed to being illusional, nevertheless it does "operate within the energy field of illusion and immersion - the paradigm of this medium" (Grau, 9).

The goal of virtual artist is to achieve for the viewer the strongest possible feeling of being in the picture. The picture the artist has created with strong cognition of reality bounded together with illusion. For example the illusion of changing distances between the objects is a technical solution that works as an immersive effect thanks to human imagination. To maximize the experience multiple human information channels can be manipulated through sound, odour, movement, change in temperature and many more.

The world of design and virtual reality is delightful. Simply looking at some photos of virtual art projects brings sensuous pleasure. For example an interactive virtual-reality project Osmose (1995) by a Canadian artist Char Davies. Osmose combines 3D computer graphics and interactive 3D sound, a head-mounted display and real-time motion tracking based on breathing and balance.

Oliver Grau gives more facsinating examples of the image development through the history. I go on exploring his writing and the various aspects of design on behalf of illusions and virtual world.

Colour appeal II

As discussed before colours in web design have strong impact on user's trust, satisfaction and resulting e-loyalty. This could be generalized for any kind of coloured graphical user interface - how pleasing it is to learn and use one and which effect it gives to the mind through eyes and perception. Certain combinations may result in illusions that when created on purpose can make great art but in the wrong place at the wrong time can decrease user's trust and lower the user experience level.

The authors of 'Techniques and Tools for Using Colour in Computer Interface Design' (Wright, Mosser-Wooley, Wooley. 1997) make distinction between two important parts for achieving successful colour interfaces - Human Visual System and Colour Display System - and give theoretical overview. This short paper includes several guidelines for selecting suitable background, foreground and text colours. Being more than 10 years old the ideas about colour combinations for successful web and interface design may not be fresh enough for applying in todays' projects, but the theory behind it is still valid. Not to mention the facts about anatomy of human visual system that origin from diversity of used literature dating back even as far as 20 or more years.

Very important aspect the authors (Wright et al. 1997) mention is certain colour combinations and organizations that create illusions as a result of the eyes' anatomy. While blue suits very well on the background, it is complicated to focus on the foreground as text or other small graphics. The sharp edges are lost when having side by side the colours differing only in the amount of blue and having the same level of green and red. Uneffectively chosen colours can cause eye fatigue, strain and stress.

Designers should help users develop mental models in order to better learn, understand and manipulate the system by taking use of colour effects on the mind. Wright et al (1997) suggest colour choice guidlines as follows: simplicity, consistency, clarity, and language of color. By simplicity they mean the number of different colours on the site to be used (human short term memory 7+/-2). Consistency counts for assigning meanings to colours, for different concepts different colours should be used. Clarity makes it easier and faster to interpret the meaning of elements, for example green for 'go' and red for 'warning' not vice versa. And last the intriguing language of colour - which mental models do people have in that certain cultural space and how does our brain translate the information coming through our eyes?

One aspect of colour appeal is the learnability and usability of the application, but much intriguing one to match the aimed audience, their already developed mental models and the right colour combinations and organization in order to influence them in desired way. Another theoretical base giving directions for further research in design of human-computer interaction field.

Reference:
Wright, Mosser-Wooley, Wooley. 1997
http://www.acm.org/crossroads/xrds3-3/color.html#4

Colour appeal in web design

Colours have an effect on mood and feelings of people. There are several studies carried out to specify the impact colours have on human psychology and behavior; The results are used for therapy and for example interior design. Colours also have an important role to play in the web design and the designers should take advantage of the effects different combinations have. Still, loads of strange solutions are there to be seen online. On the one hand it might be poor knowledge on design, on the other hand it could just as well be an approach from different culture. The research carried out in Canada amongst three cultural groups - namely Candada, Germany and Japan - tried to specify the impact colour appeal has on user's trust, satisfaction and e-loyality using experiment, survey and previous research.

In todays web, with the variety of web 2.0 solutions available, catching attention, gaining and keeping the users by providing them with trustworthy and satisfactory environment has crucial role. Dianne Cyr (2009) states that little research has been done to reveal the effect of online applications' colours on the users of different cultures. For this study an experimental environment was created based on an e-commerce site for purchising electronics.

The site was redesigned in three versions - grey, yellow and blue, representing respectively the hypotetical preferances of canadians, japanese and german users. These preferances were found browsing through 30 municipal websites from each country. The authors expected to get confirmation to the hypotesis through the experiments and survey among 30 students from each country. However, it is rather radical to expect japanese to prefer yellow, germans blue and canadians grey design. The results were in this direction but did not meet authors expectations fully.

Nevertheless, the results showed that colour appeal does have effect on the user's trust and satisfaction towards the site and these implicate the e-loyality. For these questions, the results of the eye-tracking experiment and survey were used. All participants browsed all three webs ites with different colour schemas. The authors are rather unsatisfied with their results but find that the research gives good impulse and beginning for further studies in the field. The knowledge of colour appeal in web design, the way colours affect user behaviour, mood, reactions and perception will benefit the designers as they put it into practics.

Reading the material given leads to discover more on the relationship of colours and human-computer interaction, successful interface design and perceptions among different cultures. One very interesting tool used in given research was eye-tracking. A great tool to evaluate the reactions person has in a fraction of a second, where is the most catchy point in the design, for how long the eyes stay there before finding the next point etc. Many ides to be followed from this readig. Until the next post.

Reference:
Cyr, D., et al., Colour appeal in website design within and across cultures: A multi-method evaluation. International Journal of Human Computer Studies (2009),
doi:10.1016/j.ijhcs.2009.08.005

Week 5-2: Different People, Digital World

A minority group that can make use of Internet to reduce alienation and prejudice might be students that for some reason do not come to campus very often. Our study program is also a version of this situation and the alienation is already minimized by different means - video conference, blogosphere, forums and chat. The students taking part of programs that are not aimed as IMKE is, could also benefit when the possibilities of network would be used intensely.

I found a study on this problem stating that the students who come to campus once a week or even less are therefore cut off of the intellectual community on campus. The study is called Implementation of an Online Intellectual Community in a Graduate Educational Setting and has been carried out in Claremont Graduate University. To see the importance and test the means for providing better communication online environment was settled and tested. The results showed that the students were very satisfied and felt stong connection towards other members after being active in the environment.