CC BY
2
УДК 311.21
Deriugina A. student
3nd year, Faculty of Sociology St Petersburg State University Russia, St Petersburg ANALYZE OF THE ARTICLE "PLAYFUL BIOMETRICS: CONTROVERSIAL TECHNOLOGY THROUGH THE LENS OF PLAY"
WRITTEN BY ARIANE ELLERBROK
Annotation: The article is an over-view of the work presented by Ariane Ellerbrok. The idea of this paper is to analyze ideas about technological points of Big Data, discuss in which way companies use our information, how we can find out it and divide these ways into serious ideas and "playful". Finally, the aim of this analyze is to give some comments and provide it with some examples which people face in our modern life.
Keywords: Datafication, Big Data, Play lens, modern technologies, face recognition
Ariane Ellerbrok in her article "PLAYFUL BIOMETRICS: Controversial Technology through the Lens of Play" raises the question "what public legitimation frames and forms of cultural practice might operate to smooth the way for the introduction of otherwise contentious technologies into the public domain?". Her opinion is that it is here where theoretical attention to the role of play might provide with new avenues for working through some of these recent surveillance developments, as well as for thinking through technological emergence and expansion more generally. Also, it is really important to mention why this issue is so relevant nowadays. The point is that to date, there has been only limited analysis of play - particularly as a form of cultural practice - as a "potential driving force in the emergence of technologies with sometimes very serious implications".
It was interesting for me to read the idea that relatively new technology of automated face recognition (FR) system has not only "play role". I am used to this feature as a comfortable stuff for unlocking an iphone for example or using a funny mask in a snapchat or instagram. However, things are not so easy as I though from the first sight. Originally it was invented to operate via mathematical algorithm and the goal of many of these systems is to match an unknown face to a previously existing image of a known individual in a database, thereby identifying the person in question. So, it came out that "an identification technology widely associated with state control", airport security, and the war on terror turned into a new representation as a "benign" and "user-friendly computer application" that instead speaks to pleasure, convenience, and personal entertainment.
Reading this research, I have found out one of the downsides of face recognition system. As it was said it is complicated to trust it 100 percent because there are many factors that make complicate the task of determining the face. While accurate identification using FR appeared promising under controlled test conditions, with facial images taken in cooperation with the subject, using high
photo resolution, under controlled lighting, and with no major changes to the subject's appearance from one photo to the next (such as age or weight gain), "the identification capabilities were severely reduced when any of these conditions were removed". These limitations have been problematic for the take -up of the technology by law enforcement and national security interests. That can lead to a fact that sometimes innocent individuals are inaccurately matched to a suspect identity in a data bases and causes racial discrimination: "Equally as problematic when they do work as when they do not". It is to these crucially important new developments that authorturn - "from a discussion of hard biometrics and the associated implications of their use to the recent shift into an emerging "soft" or "feminized" biometric apparatus".
Several new programs allowed individuals to access FR software on their home computers and photo networking Web sites to organize their personal digital photos. "Initial examples included Google Picasa 3.5 (Google Inc., Mountainview, CA), Picasa Web Albums (Google Inc.), and iPhoto Faces (Apple Inc., Cupertino, CA)". These programs share a common designation as "soft" technology, relative to their clearly more militarized FR predecessors. For instance, according to "Picasa" program people first help it to recognize face by comparing several images as potentially belonging to the same person by clicking on it. This narrows down the facial template of data points belonging to that particular person, which the program can then "learn" from as it searches for more potential matches. Or for example Facebook boasts a database of over 10 billion photos and in the first month that Face.com's Photo Tagger application was operational, it tagged over 400 million of these images alone, and we can expect to see even greater numbers of biometric photo tags as FR is incorporated into Facebook's default photo application. That this process escapes almost without comment by many users is a testament to an era in which photo "tagging" has become normalized as a routine part of how individuals interact with one another online.
The important thing to say about is that it is entirely possible that the images, face templates, or data points collected by one FR system will increasingly be transferable to other systems. In other words, it is possible for biometric data collected in social media platforms to be transferred to other biometric systems, put to uses above and beyond organizing digital photos. This could allow for more controversial use of the information than was originally intended and people haven't given their "YES" for it: "The information collected tends to be widely dispersed, rendering problematic any argument that data will not be used for a particular purpose because ownership of the information becomes so diverse".
The result is that under the pretext of making our daily routine more convenient and even safe, companies collect, store and use our data. and we may blindly help them in this sometimes without even realizing the risks and consequences.
Bibliography:
1. Ellerbrok, A., 2011. Playful biometrics: controversial technology through the lens of play. The Sociological Quarterly, 52 (4), 528-547.
