[wordup] Online Private Investigation (O.P.I): The Bill Joy Project

[Adam Shand]

This sort of profiling of public individuals as a demonstration of
modern privacy concerns is hardly new.  What's interesting about this is
that it's done from an artists point of view.

From: http://www.bsing.net/toc.html

Against Data Determinism in a Networked World
Brooke Singer, Spring 2002
Online Private Investigation (O.P.I): The Bill Joy Project

"Online Private Investigation" (O.P.I.) came directly out of my research
and production of SPv2. O.P.I. began with an online investigation into
an individual, Bill Joy. I gathered considerable information, including
but not limited to a background search, real estate holdings,
voter-registration information, the individual's company profile, salary
information, pending patent information, driver's license information, a
marriage license, company emails and census data. I allowed a select
group of people to review the resulting dossier (see fig. 3). This group
was a mix of people of all ages and backgrounds. I was also interested
in creating a group of different disciplines. In my group, there was a
Jungian psychoanalyst, a lawyer, an architect, a business consultant, a
video artist, a physical therapist, a university student and others.

After my participants thoroughly read the dossier, they wrote a brief
description of Bill Joy. Next they took a Myers-Briggs personality test
and answered several short questions from the perspective of Bill Joy.
The questions were taken from the back page of "Vanity Fair" magazines.
The back page is devoted to what is called the "Proust Questionnaire" in
which celebrities answer questions like: "Which living person do you
most admire?" and "If you were to die and come back as a thing, what
thing would you be?"

I used the responses to paint a collective portrait of this person (or
the person perceived via the data file). The particulars of the file
were not part of the final piece. Rather, the focus became the persona
that emerged from the various readings of the dossier. Also, no one
participant was quoted or credited. Instead, I wove the responses
together to create a multi-faceted, and perhaps conflicting, picture of
an individual realized through data. The result of this process (as of
now) is a series of posters that are "O.P.I Made for Bill Joy" (see fig.
4).

So why Bill? Bill Joy is one of the co-founders of the technology
company Sun Microsystems. At Sun, he promotes the abandonment of the
personal computer in exchange for a low-tech device that runs off
powerful corporate-controlled servers. What this means is the network
you are connected to, not the box on your desk, will do the job you want
done. The appeal is that consumers will not have to handle so many
technical problems, but the major danger is centralized control of
personal computing. Sun has repeatedly declared that the reign of the PC
is over. Networking is king. In addition, the CEO at Sun, Scott McNealy,
is (in)famous for his statement, "Privacy is dead. Get over it."

The coupling of centralized supercomputing with a disregard for privacy
is a scary thought. The ability to collect, store and access large
amounts of information on individuals would be even easier than it is
today. In addition, the capacity for analyzing this data for the purpose
of predicting and controlling behavior would increase dramatically.

Bill Joy was just a proxy. Most of the information in his data dossier
comes from public records that are maintained in the United States,
records increasingly found online. These records exist for all U.S.
citizens.

This project is unfinished and will take other forms before it is
completed. In this first instance of O.P.I., my participants were my
main audience since they were privy to the complete data file as well as
the resulting posters. For ethical, reasons I withheld the details of
the file from a larger audience, but informed them of its existence. The
instructional dimension of the project (what kind of personal
information is accessible online, where does one get it and what does it
look like) is therefore reserved for my participants. What becomes
apparent to a larger audience that views only the posters is the
realization that this kind of online investigation can be done and is
done. Furthermore, the posters underscore the subjective function of
reading a data dossier. My attempt to design an object for a person via
his/her data-self brings what normally is considered scientific into the
realm of subjective art making. As I cross the boundary between art and
science, I am calling into question both disciplines and asking my
viewers to consider art via science and vis a versa. I am freeing data
for a new trajectory: to educate people about personal data available
online and encourage its more careful consideration.