Lessons from the Identity Trail

I have been meaning to read some of the various available chapters in "Lessons from the Identity Trail" for some weeks now. Yesterday on Part 3 of CBC Radio's "The Current", Anna Maria Tremonti interviewed Ian Kerr about his edited book, which is the outcome of a four year project "On the Identity Trail".

During this interview, I particularly liked the way Kerr delineated people's different senses of privacy. For example, privacy advocates are concerned about the use of social networking sites, and the potential for corporations to collect personal information. However, young people using these sites are often unconcerned about future unknown uses of their personal information by corporations or government. For them, using online tools is a way to avoid the watchful authority of their parents, a much more palpable and immediate privacy demand.

I hope to read some of their book, which is being made available, in stages, for free online. I hope more projects like these will be funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council; On the Identity Trail really produced some fantastic work!