 Let us open it up. Open the floor up to reactions, questions, comments, thoughts, etc. Amr has a microphone there. I don't know if the Twitter stream is worth invoking, but we're all in a room, too, so we can speak. Jeffrey Jarvis. Laura, I'm fascinated by the notion of the two-way effect of architecture and our notions, our definitions of public study and privacy. I've learned recently the impact of the invention of the hallway in the 18th century English home, or 17th century English home, and the impact they had on the creation of a notion of privacy. So in present architecture, not only of physical spaces, but also of the web, I'm trying to turn that back around and say, how is that changing? We start by trying to impose our given present definitions of privacy and publicity onto these new systems. I'm wondering the other way around, how do you think these new systems are having an impact on our definitions of privacy and publicity? Yes, it makes sense. Actually, as an example of the 19th century, what was at stake is that these borders could be done quite easily, only through architecture, for the main type, through space and architecture. Actually, as you said, a hallway or a vestibule, or these different spaces which make the... And now, and this is really a big issue, how much architects have to deal with these other elements, because I don't think that architecture is going to change so much as a physical space in a house, for instance. I think the main rooms are going to stay as they are, but the possibility to go into a house through different devices like internet, this is surely an important thing. And I think this is also the talk, or what was saying, were simply obviously, with new devices, you can look into the garden. Can I pick up a little bit on this, because I also find that sort of notion of liminality to be a very sort of powerful and generative metaphor. But I think, I mean, in your own talk, also, you know, pointed to Van Gennep and those kinds of places from which to take sort of notions of liminality and thresholds. And one of the things that's really important in there is the social processes of separation and reintegration that are entwined with the spatial. So as you noted, it's not simply a spatial notion, it's a social notion as well. One of the things that I've sort of struck by, or inspired by the question as well, is thinking about the notion of privacy at work in the 19th century English home is not everyone has privacy in the 19th century English home, right? Exactly. I think we're agreed. I mean, it's very different below stairs than it is than it is above stairs. And that's the whole point. And I but I think that's really important for us to continue to bear in mind as we talk about these things is that there's not purely technological arrangements, but also the social arrangements that it takes to give meaning to the to the technological. And so I worry a little about the sort of the rhetoric and language we use. I was thinking in John, when you were talking about the use, even just of the word blurring, that sort of suggests almost as if a private domain and a public domain are pre-given and that somehow we're dealing in a world, a technological environment, which is blurring a boundary between domains that exist. And I'm not sure that actually is the case here where all there's always a flux in which processes of separation and reintegration take place. This is the sort of then GANEP argument for when we carry it over is that it's about processes of separation and reintegration. I think actually the other example you gave was really is really useful, right, which is say all the sort of Fourth Amendment debates, because the idea of like, oh, dear, we're living, we haven't figured out what the what the right balance is in cyberspace suggests that we there's any other domain in which we have figured out what the right balance is. Again, I'm not terribly sure that we're good at that because, you know, we're always in this process and the evolution of space is a perfectly as an excellent example for an architectural domain, we're always in the process of reformulating what for us for different us's at any given moment is a balance that works. Now that process of reformulation, I wonder if it feels like it's happening that much more rapidly now in the sense of coming from the zone of actual physical architecture. There may be differing ideas of architecture as time goes on. Architects think about things differently, but you build a space in large part, you can reconfigure it a little internally, but the space you build is the space that sits there for 20, 30, 100 years. Austin Hall, not a bad example. And people come to familiarize themselves with and then be shaped by whatever the space might encourage or discourage in their behaviors. When we now make the analogy to the online space, and I think already we found how rich the analogies are between the two, one artifact of the online space being online and all is its plasticity, that it can be reshaped, reconfigured all the time, that the space is a service, it's not a product, which makes it hard to even talk about it totally as a space. And when the English house is built for English people to live in, we kind of know who the customer is. When an online space is shaped for us to use, especially one for free, we're kind of the customer, but what's that famous aphorism now? If what you're getting online is for free, you're not the customer, you're the product, you're the one being sold. And if you're operating in a space like that that can be reshaped at any time, the Facebook I have today is not the Facebook I had yesterday because now there's Otto, something or other that I'm supposed to go change my settings, but I'm already bored, so I'm just going to leave them the way they are. I don't know how much those constant reconfigurations of spaces for motives, it's almost like the builder of my house continues to get a vote. I made one choice about who would build my house 20 years ago, and that builder is still hanging around, oh, you lost your windows. Sorry, it's an improvement, trust me, live with it for two weeks. It's like I paid you, go away, and yet they're still here. I don't know how much that constant reconfiguration plays into things. Well, again, I suggest the constant reconfiguration is a sociotechnical phenomenon, not a technical phenomenon. It's rather like that you can't step into the same stream twice. The same way, the reason Facebook today is not the same as Facebook yesterday is not purely because of what Facebook did. Heraclitus for SA Facebook. Heraclitus 2.0. The reason Facebook today is not the same as Facebook yesterday is not purely because of what Facebook did, but also because of what everybody else and all your friends did on Facebook that shapes the genre of what you will do today. It was intended for college students to know each other, but then we take it to foment revolution, that kind of thing. And I think John's example of the interoperable status update really nicely points to the sort of problems of the ways in which what I say on Twitter is different from what I say on Facebook is different from what I say on Foursquare is different from what I say on Facebook. Or at least it was until we interoperably put them all together. Yeah, well, as I deal with different audiences, different constituencies in different publics, I have certain kinds of investments in both the separations and the integrations of what is going on. So that reconfiguration is a socio-technical phenomenon in which the technology does change, the opportunities change. But our interpretations and our understandings of what genre forms are being enacted here are also up for negotiations. Yes. Speaking of socio-technical phenomenon, we have these vestigial norms at the front that we shouldn't be online while we're actually on the panel, although John is pushing that envelope. Well, the rest of us are happily clacking away, which means there's a great level of interest in the room being siphoned into cyberspace, for which we need to build a pipe to pipe it back into the physical room. So I want to invite people not only to raise their hands if they have comments, which I actually saw two hands up so we'll get to you guys, but also feel free to raise your hand and represent for something you saw online, which gives you the out to say, this isn't my view, but this seemed interesting to me. Here's something I want to put on the table. So I want to invite you to do that dynamically as a way of trying to reconnect what I suspect is a very active virtual space back to the physical one. Over here, Nell Breyer. Hi, thank you very much. Jonathan, is this on? Yeah. It's there, darling, up. Laurent, I was going to ask you if you could just speak very directly to what you feel the purpose of a threshold is. And a little bit to Julia's comments yesterday, she's talking about the idea of crawling and this notion in the art world of crawling from gallery to gallery and what the possibilities, and if there are any analogies, absent or present in cyberspace where a threshold is or is not providing the same kind of function. You understand? No. Okay, purpose of the threshold. The purpose of the threshold. I try to show it that it's exactly this double meaning of connection and of separation, which can be dealt in many different manner and what I try to show through this little talk that this unity of space as it perhaps was, in the English as I'm not sure about this has been diluted in a series of different spaces, these are physical spaces or these are virtual spaces which interconnect in some way. I still think, I'm quite convinced that there is no distraction of the traditional architectural space but it has been overloaded or newly interpreted through its behavior. Is there more you wanted to come back with now? I was just interested in how that translates or what's missing when you have direct immediate arrival at locations online and there is a lack or a different type of experience of the threshold. Like you go- Actually, I think the danger is the highly specialization of the threshold. When you can come into a space where you can do only one thing, I think there is a huge loss of independence and there it becomes in some way. But if now's analogy is we kind of apparate like Harry Potter from one site to another online. A site is loading, it's taking too long so it's like dub dub dub dot some other site dot com and it's like, okay, we'll take that away and here's this and it just appears. Are you asking kind of, could one imagine a form of transition that respects the idea of a threshold? And that there's important things that the threshold provides, not just spatial but communal and intellectual and financial that I was asking about purpose in not just a spatial sense, but in a- How could a website be more like the science center sort of luring people in gently? From where you were into where you are and where that transitional experience actually then creates a very neutral zone which is informed by the identities of the people in it not by the context of the space that you are suddenly arriving. So there's really an important idea of lingering from the past, becoming into the present, then meeting with someone else who has a different past and in the present so that the, that's where I feel like the notion of a threshold has incredible power, political power as well and if that's missing that's why I went back to Julia's comment about crawling. If there's some lack of memory in our accessing point to point locations online how does that change identity, public brow, those things that you're talking about? I was gonna say in some ways this might be a question for Paul because maybe to make it even more concrete could you imagine a website where when you're on the website there's some visual representation of where other people contemporaneously visiting the website which you normally don't know about, right? It's like being in a movie theater with a wall around you while you watch the movie. Other people visiting, you get to see where they're coming in from. Wow, there's a bunch of people pouring in from AOL to this site I'm visiting, it must not be a cool site, I'm out of here kind of thing. You know, that's, that's... Well, I mean it's certainly interesting. I mean I'm thinking actually, webmasters already have access to all this information. Correct, and they click choose to, right. You know exactly where people come from. Right. This is information that's available to some if not to all. I mean I think that you know, I think we have to be very careful about the importation of spatial metaphors, powerful as they are, because we can't escape space or time. And so those things are powerful for us. But it's been a very long time since anybody browsed the web with only one window or only one tab, right? So I'm not just in one place, I'm in many different places simultaneously. But I do think there's a question about the appropriately historicizing what it is that's going on. Both where the website came from itself and where people came from. That, let's see, very far, not getting very far with this, but let's see, the one thing I did want to add though is we have to recognize too that one of the power of these things is their dehistoricizing ability. So that's actually often one of the things that we're about when we're, we're working online. And I do worry about this idea that we want to eliminate the opportunities for a creative reconfiguration of space by reintroducing too many of the things that we do. The metaphors can be both liberating and of course confining. And it's funny, when you talk about tabs as being multiple spaces at once, in at least my experience, it's like, no, it's a bunch of stuff that I only get to visit one thing at a time. Sometimes I'm like, if only I could configure my screen so that I could see multiple websites at once, like arranging windows in, and I'm like, wait a minute, that was the point of windows 3.1. Do you remember there was like an arrange thing under window you do, has anybody ever used arrange? Right, what is with that? It's like meant to be a fundamental function and yet we never actually go, I think because each is too small. You just buy more monitors, Jonathan. You just got five monitors. Yeah, I know I do, I buy more monitors. That I finally solved my arrange problem. You're right, with more monitors. So I can't wait for the laptop of the future, which is like flump, flump, flump, and then you're really in the zone. It's like an iPad. David Weinberger. So I want to ask an obvious question. On the grounds that you can't even step into the same stream once. So local. That's not an obvious question, David. Well, that is a cryptic question. No, it's not a question. It's an intro to the question. I say, okay. You start with a cryptic thing and then it obviously is a question. Real architecture is always local, right? In a completely literal sense. And so it's entirely possible and reasonable to use a threshold or an ambiguous ambivalent place wrong and we see that happen. The web obviously is global. Privacy, as Judith was connecting, the norms of privacy have been intensely local and definitive of cultures. So is there any hope for actual privacy norms to settle down in the spaces that are put up on the global public web? Start with the lawyer. I was gonna say, start with anyone else here. There are brilliant people in there. Fair enough. Does that mean we need to re-ask David's question because people are only sort of paying attention to it, knowing somebody else would answer it? David hit us one more time and now everybody realizes they might be called upon to answer. Given the global nature of the web, is there any possibility, and given the intense local nature of privacy norms traditionally, definitive of local cultures, of culture, is there any hope that we will come to global privacy norms that can be counted or relied upon within spaces on the web which are inherently global? Thoughts on that question? Oh, right. Ken Carson. One, it's working, yeah. One thing to think about in trying to answer that is a question I was gonna ask is, that was touched on before, is thinking about how privacy and private and public spaces are related to the function of creating communities. And I think that most communities have historically been intensely local, but now communities are being created that aren't local at all. And I'd like people to talk about the relationship between public creation of communities and private creation of communities. I think I still consider that a committee of the whole refinement and question. So if people have thoughts on that. Yes, please. John Taysum, a Harvard fellow. I think the answer to the question that David just posed comes back a bit to the presentation from Laurent. And I didn't expect to be an expert on anything today, but on English houses, I'm definitely an expert. The beginning of private-ness, if you like, in the sense that Laurent was mentioning, I think was started with the chimney, the invention of the chimney. Because with the chimney, you could finally have a private space. You didn't have to be in one big communal hall. And from then on, the whole class distinction meant that the servants had no privacy. And people who had ownership had privacy, they put themselves in a room. And where it touches back on David's point, I think, is an architectural one. If you could build large factories, you could dominate economically. And where that ties back to being online, I think is a very pressing problem, because it seems to me that the way we've architected the public spaces on the web, mean that once again, the poorest people will have the least privacy. And I'm really curious to know what the panel think of that point. So this refines the question of, you could see, if not global norms, a global equilibrium in which those who can afford it get some particular level of privacy respect, and those who can't, don't. Thoughts on that? Way over here? I'm a lowly intern. But I think that the question- Wait, did you just introduce yourself as a lowly intern? We all use names here, unless you were trying to illustrate the difference between rich and poor. I think that the question that, to me, in my personal experience is more important than the creation of spaces online is the creation of spaces where people use these technologies. I've spent a lot of time in the Middle East where internet cafes are by far the norm, and laptops and personal computers at home are extremely expensive and out of the realm of possibility for the majority of people. And I think that's a kind of publicness and private-ness that is, at least thus far in this discussion, a bit absent and something about access and capital that really changes the kind of publicness and private-ness that you're creating. And I think it's, there are private forums. There are ways of making your Facebook inaccessible and accessible to certain people, and there are ways in which diasporic communities are using these to recreate the local in a globalized setting. And I think that that is worth studying, but I also think it's worth considering what I would do, like when I'm at the library, I feel particularly self-conscious about using Facebook because someone might walk by and say, you're using Facebook, you should be studying. Well, what about if you're in Syria and everything is an internet cafe and the person behind you could be a muhabarat, a spy? I don't know if that's... No, absolutely. And in fact, it probably has not escaped the notice of many regimes that want to achieve a certain level of Fourth Amendment-style ability to surveil, but don't want to eliminate internet access entirely and don't want to count only on filtering your private connection to do it, to see an internet cafe as a way to... Because you can't see the secret police, as long as there's one other person, or maybe even zero other people in the cafe and you're using somebody else's machine, you can't be assured of that privacy. And as you say, you feel it enough as a privileged person in a library, how much more must be felt? But I actually should ask you back, is your experience in those cafes that it's kind of a quiet room, clack, clack, clack, clack, kind of the way some of those gamer spaces are? The gamers are not there necessarily to have, hang out with each other, but to be online. Or is it actually a feature? People wander by, hey, what are you looking at? That's kind of interesting. It actually fosters connection that exists among the servants that sometimes Batman's sitting across the long table from his date. That was the first Batman movie? Michael Keaton, remember that one? God, I'm getting old. But very big house, very wealthy, but very isolating, precisely because it's not a shared space. I don't know what your experience was in that cafe. Sorry. Well, I think it's different, and I've been thinking about this a lot, specifically with the Syria example, because I would Skype from computers, and so whether or not I had black screens around, like, I'm sorry, walls, like miniature walls around the individual computer, you're still speaking out loud. And I think that for people who in Syria who are trying to communicate with families, for example, outside, there's a privateness to the clack, clack, clack in what you're doing in the email you're writing, and then the speech act, which inherently sort of alters the threshold. And it also definitely depends, I don't know if there was an interesting New York Times article, like several weeks ago, about China, and people who sleep in China cafes. So I can only speak about my personal experience, but I think people do play with the spaces. It actually also calls to my Nell's original point that was described as historicity, in that you could be using the computer as somebody with a nice blue passport to defend yourself, to go, I'm visiting Facebook to see if I can get there, and then the next poor person who uses the thing after you might get pegged with your historical usage. You could see that as a problem. There is actually, there's not to call it an iron key that we've been playing with that you're meant to be able to walk up to any computer, plug it in, boot from this USB key, and use it totally privately, regardless of what's on that computer, whether or not that's privacy or just security theater is another question. Paul, you've been wanting to get a last word for us. Yeah, well, I wanted to pick up on this stuff, mainly because one of my students has been doing a lot of work on with new media activists in China, and actually it started off looking at World of Warcraft players in China, and I think some of the examples that come out there really go back to one of the premises of David's question, right? The web is global, but your encounters with it are always local. They're always happening in particular kinds of places. For the Chinese World of Warcraft players, many of whom do go to public spaces to play alongside other people, not necessarily with other people, but near other people, and that's important to them. One of the things that's fascinating is they're playing World of Warcraft, they're playing an American game, and they know it's an American game, and it comes from an American company, but they also talk about it importantly as a Chinese game because for them it fundamentally embodies the principles of Guangxi and sort of the shared practice, of shared commitments, of sharing and mutual responsibility, and they say, this is a Chinese game. It has Chinese values built into it. So your encounter with these things was always intensely local. And so it does go back to David's question, about what kind of expectations do we have for privacy norms? Well, there's certainly not going to be global agreements about what happens, and they don't even necessarily need to be given that even in this sort of global cyberspace, your encounters with it and the actual practices always happen in particular places which in turn can be a feature as much as it is a bug, a federated system where you can choose the communities and the norms you want to subscribe to would be better. And where those global practices are opportunities to give you to reimagine yourself in your own position. Please join me in thanking our panel for getting us off to a great start today.