Hyper-convergence: the Coming State of Media Arts & Services
HOW TV, INTERNET, TELECOMMUNICATIONS, RFID & COMMERCIAL SERVICES WILL CONVERGE TO CREATE NEW SOCIAL SPHERE, SECURITY RISKS
For some time, we have heard speculation that the user-centered logic of the Internet medium will persuade old-guard media powers to embrace the model, and we will see a convergence of online, print, radio and televisual media, in one integrated system. Media integration will likely go far beyond that, so security has to be the watchword as technology invades personal space and our attempts at a ‘pursuit of happiness’.
At present, the movement favoring net neutrality —or equal access to online content— may be the segment of media markets and public consciousness most aware of the issue and its implications for the nature and quality of information and information access. Net neutrality is the premise that connection providers should not be permitted to take any actions that influence users’ access to online information or content providers’ access to the public.
Cable companies and ISPs are seeking the power to charge for a stratified web-traffic format, where those who pay a special fee will be granted higher degrees of bandwidth not available to any other content providers or customers, even though they already charge for connection and connection speed at both ends of the service. This is what convergence should not be, if it is to benefit consumers and favor the free press.
Hyper-convergence is a term that seeks to explain the integration of a broad array of services and personal information management tools into the multimedia web. It refers to the blurring of the barriers between online activity and real-world effects, which will present major security concerns.
New technologies can make hyper-convergence into a landmark moment for consumers and can increase access for many to events, information and resources that might otherwise be more difficult to access. But they can also increase in dramatic ways the risk to which we subject sensitive personal data.
RFID —Radio Frequency IDentification— is one of the most controversial and well-debated new technologies whose implementation could both expand the scope of hyper-convergence in powerful ways and also subject the individual to unnecessary and ill-advised long-term risk of identity-theft or fraud.
RFID-enabled smart chips can help integrate products, services, personal information and personal space, into a fluid information environment, but plans to implement global networks of “broadcasting” or “active” RFID chips means that one may all-too-quickly let slip sensitive personal information, without technological standards catching up to the severe exigencies of this new security risk.
Biometric data is another, related problem area. Touted as a security enhancement measure, the implementation of even narrowly-construed, isolated biometric readings, poses a major, lifelong personal security risk for the individual.
Unlike a Social Security number, a signature, an account number or a credit card, an iris pattern, a fingerprint, one’s genome, blood-type and facial structure —all of which various biometric security scanning systems propose to read or sample for ID purposes—, cannot be changed. And if they could be, it would present a major security risk for the system attempting to enhance its security by such means, because of the presumption that the use of such information is inherently safer.
Permitting one’s private biological data to propagate across an online network, or into state-run databanks, or databanks run by multinational firms, is to surrender a part of one’s identity, for all time, to the idiosyncracies and shortcomings of the system, at which one must take into serious consideration the supposed value of a potential commercial or procedural convenience.
But services and media are combining, and that makes sense. The logic of synthesis shows that connecting ideas, fields of study, geographical locations, cultural oddities, people and access to information, increases understanding and breeds a more fluid social reality. TV, Internet, mail, messaging, voice communication and purchasing processes, will increasingly combine to blur the line between virtual and lived-in physical space.
The challenge will be building systems that allow the individual to maintain all existing freedoms and natural barriers against fraud and identity theft, while facilitating access to that ever broader range of media and services.
jr3o @ February 17, 2008