Uncertainty. Uncertainty about the existing symbolic order, norms and values and which way out to choose. In ‘Life as a construction box’, Swierstra^[1] et al. begin their publication with the conception of ‘way out’ which, in my ayes is a bit heavy (my connotation of ‘way out’ has to do with escape). But then, the publication is a bout the most relevant, current and rather important issues of our days. Issues like privacy, man and machine, ambient and pervasive technology, health and being unhealthy and, as would like to put it, the makebility of reality, an as fundamental as rather intangible confusion trying to surface through solid ethical questions and controversies. Dutch philosopher Peter Paul Verbeek^{[see Swiestra]} questions whether people have the possibility to withdraw themselves from ambient and pervasive technology. And what about our log-time disputed basic right of privacy?

Last Wednesday we had Emiel Kanters from Qantel star as a guest speaker at the lab. He was telling us about our edentity (your online identity) and how we currently are not in control of our own data or as he calls it edentity. This quickly turned into a vivid debate where slowly the 2 sides of the debate became clear. 

This week the Media battle between students from the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht and Saxion in Enschede is taking place. It’s the third time we use this format, and this time the theme is inner city entrepreneurship. Students will work out a crossmedial strategy to attract more people to shops in the inner cities of Utrecht and Enschede, balancing physical with an on-line presence. Meanwhile a completely different media battle is going on: the struggle for freedom of the Egyptian people and people in other Arab states. While our media battles are in an atmosphere of friendly competition, in Cairo the media battle is rather more grim and,  no offence to our commissioners, students, and colleagues, has higher stakes.  What, if any, is their relationship ? In both cases there is a highly visible and important role for social media, mobile communication and internet usage.

,,Google is watching you”, is a phrase you hear more and more often. A lot of people tend to get more and more afraid of Google. Reason? They know what you search for, if you have a Gmail account they know what you are emailing about and so on. Google logs your data in order to improve their service to their customers. We all want better service, but we are afraid of giving information to Google. There is an option to opt out though.

This week I took another trip down memory lane. I was cleaning out some boxes at the attic and came across a bunch of old faxes. It drove me right back to when I was about fifteen years old.  Me and my girlfriends used to spend evenings faxing to a group of friends living on the other side of the country. My dad always used to wonder why the fax machine was out of paper, again…