Publicness

Project Description: We created ten fake Facebook accounts to see how "likes" and friends would affect advertising. After some initial difficulties, we discovered that Facebook only advertises when a user has either friends or a location. Other interesting results include one of the accounts receiving friend requests from real people and another account being discovered by Facebook as a fake. This experiment led to us to question the right Facebook has to use personal information for the sake of advertising.

The internet is a public space--that is, it is a process of social interaction wherein individual users may connect with other users around the world.  But being an individual user in a vast social phenomenon has certain implications; we are unaware--though we have grown up using the internet--of the extent to which others could use internetworking to discover information about us.

We need to reinstate the Office of Technology Assessment now more than ever due to congress's natural discomfort and inability to comprehend topics revolving around science and technology which has resulted in millions of dollars being spent on ill-informed policy decisions.