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October 13, 2003
ubicomp, privacy & vulnerability
Today was the first day of Ubicomp (the conference for those interested in ubiquitous computing). Per tradition, the first day was a collection of workshops in which people submitted applications to attend. Much to many people's frustration, there were two opposing workshops with overlapping themes: intimacy and privacy. Perhaps they do not seem that overlapping, but they are quite intertwined and many participants were immediately curious about the others' workshop. In the Intimacy workshop, we noted towards the end that the explicity topic of privacy had not really arisen all day. In raising this point, we noted that we had been grappling with it as vulnerability, not explicitly privacy. In regards to privacy in intimate spaces, people were far more concerned with vulnerability than privacy.
The intimacy workshop was fascinating for Ubicomp, as its topic put quite a few people on edge. Yet its draw was significant.
Dinner was attended by a blend of folks from the privacy and intimacy workshops. One topic immediately surfaced. While the intimacy workshop was 2/3 women, not a single woman attended the privacy workshop. Perhaps the traditional approaches to ubicomp are a bit masculinized linguistically and culturally...
Posted by zephoria at 02:06 AM in Academia | Permalink
Comments
I was in the ubicomp03 privacy workshop. I can comment a bit on this. During the workshop, we lamented its lack of women, though we didn't recognize its connection with the intimacy workshop, as best as i can recall. IOW, we asked where all the women were, but we didn't realize the answer was "down the hall in the intimacy workshop."
Interestingly, this year's privacy workshop drew its theme (Privacy as Boundary Negotiation) in part from a recent paper authored by a woman (who did not attend the workshop) and a man (who did). (danah commented on this paper here.) Of further note, a widely influential paper that woke the computer security community (incl. cypherpunks) to the idea that poor usability was a prime reason so few non-geeks used their software was authored primarily by a woman. Another widely cited paper on privacy, ubiquitous computing, and human-computer interaction was authored by two women.
the upshot here is that some of the most widely cited papers at the nexus of privacy and human-computer interaction (and this workshop also lives at that nexus) were authored by women. and yet no women were at the workshop. odd. the workshop CFP seems unmasculinized enough as far as i can tell. although... all five workshop organizers were men. i suspect that's a big one there. the intimacy workshop was organized by two women and two men, and that, i suspect, was key to attracting participants of both genders. i co-organized a privacy workshop in 2002 w/ danah and two other men. most of our six or so participants were men, but we had one or two women. i hadn't thought of it before, but perhaps having a woman on the organizing committee was a factor there. (you can now picture a lightbulb sparking to life above my groggy head, as i realize i could not possibly co-organize a workshop again with only men as my co-organizers).
Posted by: scott lederer at Oct 26, 2003 2:19:54 PM
I was also at the Ubicomp workshop on privacy, my first time. One question to ask is, what is the attendance like at previous workshops on privacy, ex. Ubicomp last year and CSCW? In other words, is there something essential, or is it accidental?
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