The Life of Mobile Data: Technology, Mobility and Data Subjectivity April 15 16, 2004 University of Surrey, England The rapid adoption and diffusion of mobile devices over the past decade have altered the way information is generated, organized and communicated about individuals and their lives. The construction of new mobile data profiles, and of mobile, informatic selves, hold the potential to transform what is organizationally and interpersonally meant by privacy, individuality, community, risk, trust, and reciprocity in a mobilizing, and globalizing world. In order to examine these transformations, the RIS:OME project at the University of Surrey is hosting an international, interdisciplinary conference to address emerging social and cultural relations of mobility, privacy, identity, information and communication. This conference will bring together academic, industry and policy researchers and practitioners to critically address how mobile information and communications technologies structure relations of privacy, security, trust, power, identity and difference. There are a number of questions that inform the themes of the conference. In what ways, for example, do mobiles reconfigure the relations of trust, risk, privacy and reciprocity embedded in organizational and interpersonal data-sharing? In what ways do mobiles contribute to the construction of identity and of the information self? What is the relationship between mobile data and the individual? Who owns and controls the emerging, individualized mobile data image? What roles do consumption and consumerism play in the social relations of privacy, trust and security? Is the development of mobile technologies associated with emerging relations of risk, uncertainty and privatisation? What social, cultural and regulatory factors have influenced the generation of mobile data in different countries? How do these factors influence culturally specific understandings and practices of globalized and transnational privacy, risk and trust? Are regimes of information sharing and data protection patterned along axes of development and underdevelopment? What roles do national differences and political economies play in the construction of emerging mobile data relations? How are politics reconfigured within and between countries via mobile data technologies and changing mobilities? What critical approaches can be brought to bear on our understanding of diversity, difference and resistance in the generation of mobile data? How can we account for the rapid uptake of mobile devices, and the development of mobile data sharing, both now and in the future? We seek to bring critical perspectives to bear on the development and widespread uptake of mobile technologies and developments in information sharing and data profiling over the last decade. The conference organizers thus invite papers presenting empirically grounded and theoretically informed analyses of the social changes that mobile technologies and their data relations have brought about. Suggested themes could include, but are by no means limited to: · risk, trust and power in mobile information ownership, control, access and management · culturally specific patterns of informational trust and privacy · organizational structuring of mobile information paradigms · data subjectivity and the construction of identity through mobile technologies · mobile communications and emerging regulatory environments · privacy enhancing technologies, their problems, paradoxes and possibilities · privacy advocacy in the mobile environment · organizational and interpersonal information sharing · the lifecycle of mobile personal data: its generation, integration, profiling and mining · mobile surveillance, security and globalization · mobile data protection, data subjectivity and knowledge · information gathering and social memory Papers and panels are invited that address the conference themes. Paper length: 20 minutes. Panel presentations encouraged. Timetable: Submission of Abstracts: 500 700 words, October 31st 2003 Notification of acceptance of papers: December 12th 2003 Paper Submission: February 13th 2004 Registration Deadline: January 8th 2004 All conference correspondence should be sent to the conference organizers at the addresses below. Further details of the conference will be posted to the RIS:OME website (http://risome.soc.surrey.ac.uk) as they become available. Conference Fees, Registration and Accomodation Details of conference fees and registration, and conference accommodation and availability, will be posted to the RIS:OME website as they become available. A limited number of rooms will be reserved on-campus for conference delegates. Requests for on-campus accommodation should be sent to the conference organizers in advance of the January 8th registration deadline. Conference Organisers: Nicola Green (n.green@soc.surrey.ac.uk) Sean Smith (s.a.smith@soc.surrey.ac.uk) RIS:OME Project (http://risome.soc.surrey.ac.uk/) Department of Sociology, University of Surrey Guildford Surrey GU2 7XH United Kingdom Phone: +44-1483-689-460 Fax: +44-1483-699-551 With the support of Intel Corporation, and the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey. _________________________________ Sean Smith Research Fellow, Mobile Technologies, Department of Sociology, University of Surrey. ph: +44 (0)1483 686 966 m: +44 (0)7786 511 042