Hi, I am aline martinez.
I make
art
using data.
I foster
innovation
.
The Digital Self - Extrart Base
On the 12th Jan. 2019, we went to Sanghhai to talk about our work on the topic of "Trust in the age of algorithms" and "Digital Self".
The idea of the digital self is not new. The term is explored again and again in films, lectures and art works. Morpheus maybe was the one I heard using the expression almost 20 years ago, and at the time it was harder to grasp the concept. In a few words, the “Digital Self” is a term we use to talk about digital identity, traces and footprints online. It is an online approximation of who you are. And can be built via algorithms interpreting our data and online activity.
In that scope, how social media apps collect our information in China or anywhere is not that different. The difference is more how people respond to the technology. The word that I heard the most whenever talking about technology was “convenient”. It seems that the convenience stands above any other justification of surveillance and data privacy. Chinese people seems to be very fast and adaptive. To apply for a travel visa more and more companies in China are introducing a “trustworthiness” score based on your finances, to make the process of applying for a visa easier, the trade off is that this data could be shared with third parties or even with the government. This seems convenient, right? Yes! But only as an option and not as a rule.
We also saw the concept of television becoming rapidly obsolete there. An app called Tik Tok (the equivalent of Snapchat) is the obsession there. Almost everybody in the metro no matter their age, was watching people doing random stuff online. And as a person who doesn’t have a phone, the fun part for me was to watch this behaviour.