Consider8: Research Issues

There are several pressing research questions related to the urge to exploit information generated by the use of IT.

First, there is a range of ethical issues that must be addressed. One does not have to be too imaginative to come up with a number of use cases that would clearly violate the privacy and autonomy of individuals. But the stories of Phorm and NebuAd make imagination unnecessary. On the other hand, no one can claim complete and exclusive right to all personal information related to her. This would require total isolation. Interacting with other people and society inevitably demands a compromise between private and public. Few people get upset by the fact that most stores have optic counters in their entrances for keeping track of the number of customers. Likewise, few drivers seem to avoid road segments with sensors that not only count the number of vehicles passing, but also classify them and measure their speed.

There is clearly a need to understand where to draw the line. What type of informational byproducts can be used without the risk of violating someone? For what uses can the information be exploited? These issues are intimately related to informed consent, but also issues of creating realistic and robust expectations on IT use.

In addition, there is a whole range of research issues related to these basic questions of secondary use of informational byproducts. For example, what is the role of anonymization? Would pseudonymization make a difference (at least Phorm was hoping that it would), or perhaps information aggregation?

Second, in the cases where refinement of informational byproducts can be considered ethically sound, we are facing a number of related challenges. For example, most use cases will be targeting an abundance of information, thus creating challenges related to scalability. There are also a number of challenges related to what type of predictions can be made of informational byproducts, and their accuracy.