6 ms·

The Change My Son Brought, Seen Through Personal Data

71 points by susanhi 12y ago

IvyMike 12y ago
I read this right after yesterday's article about Chris Knight, "The Last True Hermit". In particular, this part makes an interesting contrast with the quantified self movement. > "But you must have thought about things," I said. "About your life, about the human condition." > Chris became surprisingly introspective. "I did examine myself," he said. "Solitude did increase my perception. But here's the tricky thing—when I applied my increased perception to myself, I lost my identity. With no audience, no one to perform for, I was just there. There was no need to define myself; I became irrelevant. The moon was the minute hand, the seasons the hour hand. I didn't even have a name. I never felt lonely. To put it romantically: I was completely free."
junto 12y ago
A fascinating insight. I imagine my data would show similar trends as my children were born. Magical times indeed. One of the things I've struggled with (and my brother too) is that it is incredibly hard to resist the urge to share personal information on the internet concerning your children, whether that be their names, experiences, videos or photos. My brother and I came to the conclusion that we should not leak information that could diminish our children's privacy, as they have no power to say anything for or against it. Rather we would refrain completely from divulging any personal data about them, full stop. It is hard though to resist the temptation. You want to shout from the rooftops about the day your child started to walk, or the first time they said 'Papa', or share a video of their first steps. However, our conclusion was that if we put ourselves in their shoes, we would be disappointed that we did not have the opportunity to have our say on the matter. We have their trust, even though they don't realise it yet. So, with the inclusion of social networks like Facebook, we have not shared any information about our children. I don't know if it is the right decision, but I can only hope that not doing something is better than doing something and not being able to take it back. We live in a world that is vastly different from the one our parents grew up in. Privacy today is like gold dust. I hope the next generation can turn the tables on the all seeing eyes, but I fear we have done too little too late.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - junto 12y ago
    So if I took lots of pictures of you and published them on the internet you wouldn't mind? Maybe you don't, maybe you do, but shouldn't you have a say in that?
    - monknomo 12y ago
      I might be tweaked if you published a bunch of pictures of me sitting at my desk at work or whatever (because you would be a creepy stalker), but I would not be unhappy in the least if you developed a timemachine, went back in time, made friends with my parents and started posting my baby pictures to future-facebook. The things that babies and children do vs. the things that adults do are not comparable. Leaving aside, it's darn hard to reliably recognize people from their high school photos when looking at their older selves and next to impossible for babies. Further, if that parental photos and publishing those photos somehow violates the child's rights, I would say that children have virtually no rights and what rights they do have their parents can exercise on their behalf, regardless of the child's opinion. Even further, what plausible harm could come from a picture of a kid in a tub, for example?
      - logicalmind 12y ago
        "Even further, what plausible harm could come from a picture of a kid in a tub, for example?" Knowing the kind of data mining that occurs with text, one would only expect that future mining would occur with images as well. So what happens when all public images of you from birth to present are indexed and used to make decisions about you? For example, what would happen if you tried to get health coverage and the company could look into these indexed images for all contact with known carcinogens to determine your ability or cost for health coverage?
        brewdad 12y ago
floil 12y ago
As the father of a six day old I can't but wonder: Is this guy totally checked out in the care of his son? How can you have a newborn baby and not be waking up at all hours of the night?
- mentat 12y ago
  Don't be an ass. He's logging the "down for the night" and "up for the day" times. This isn't some objective truth.
  - dang 12y ago
    Please don't be personally rude on Hacker News. This comment would be best with just the middle sentence.
    - mentat 12y ago
      If you think the original comment is not offensive I don't think you're paying attention.
      - dang 12y ago
        That may be, but the rule of not being personally rude holds regardless.
        mentat 12y ago
        So we're not allowed to call people out when they are in fact being asses. (And this was originally intended in the donkey sort of ass way, indicating rudeness.) This seems amazingly arbitrary.
- bdamm 12y ago
  I wondered that as well, actually. Lots of folks seem to be able to arrange for help but when my son was born it was just my wife and I. Our families were not able to help in any meaningful way. So we slept when the baby slept, were awake when the baby was awake, and traded care in shifts as much as possible. This fellow may be lucky and may have some additional help. In my case, I usually had the 2-6am shift. His kid is very cute and looks quite alert! So whatever the care is I would say it's working fine for them. Didn't see any photos of the parents.

71 points by susanhi 12y ago

I read this right after yesterday's article about Chris Knight, "The Last True Hermit". In particular, this part makes an interesting contrast with the quantified self movement. > "But you must have thought about things," I said. "About your life, about the human condition." > Chris became surprisingly introspective. "I did examine myself," he said. "Solitude did increase my perception. But here's the tricky thing—when I applied my increased perception to myself, I lost my identity. With no audience, no one to perform for, I was just there. There was no need to define myself; I became irrelevant. The moon was the minute hand, the seasons the hour hand. I didn't even have a name. I never felt lonely. To put it romantically: I was completely free."

junto 12y ago

A fascinating insight. I imagine my data would show similar trends as my children were born. Magical times indeed. One of the things I've struggled with (and my brother too) is that it is incredibly hard to resist the urge to share personal information on the internet concerning your children, whether that be their names, experiences, videos or photos. My brother and I came to the conclusion that we should not leak information that could diminish our children's privacy, as they have no power to say anything for or against it. Rather we would refrain completely from divulging any personal data about them, full stop. It is hard though to resist the temptation. You want to shout from the rooftops about the day your child started to walk, or the first time they said 'Papa', or share a video of their first steps. However, our conclusion was that if we put ourselves in their shoes, we would be disappointed that we did not have the opportunity to have our say on the matter. We have their trust, even though they don't realise it yet. So, with the inclusion of social networks like Facebook, we have not shared any information about our children. I don't know if it is the right decision, but I can only hope that not doing something is better than doing something and not being able to take it back. We live in a world that is vastly different from the one our parents grew up in. Privacy today is like gold dust. I hope the next generation can turn the tables on the all seeing eyes, but I fear we have done too little too late.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- junto 12y ago
  So if I took lots of pictures of you and published them on the internet you wouldn't mind? Maybe you don't, maybe you do, but shouldn't you have a say in that?
  - monknomo 12y ago
    I might be tweaked if you published a bunch of pictures of me sitting at my desk at work or whatever (because you would be a creepy stalker), but I would not be unhappy in the least if you developed a timemachine, went back in time, made friends with my parents and started posting my baby pictures to future-facebook. The things that babies and children do vs. the things that adults do are not comparable. Leaving aside, it's darn hard to reliably recognize people from their high school photos when looking at their older selves and next to impossible for babies. Further, if that parental photos and publishing those photos somehow violates the child's rights, I would say that children have virtually no rights and what rights they do have their parents can exercise on their behalf, regardless of the child's opinion. Even further, what plausible harm could come from a picture of a kid in a tub, for example?
    - logicalmind 12y ago
      "Even further, what plausible harm could come from a picture of a kid in a tub, for example?" Knowing the kind of data mining that occurs with text, one would only expect that future mining would occur with images as well. So what happens when all public images of you from birth to present are indexed and used to make decisions about you? For example, what would happen if you tried to get health coverage and the company could look into these indexed images for all contact with known carcinogens to determine your ability or cost for health coverage?
      - brewdad 12y ago

floil 12y ago

As the father of a six day old I can't but wonder: Is this guy totally checked out in the care of his son? How can you have a newborn baby and not be waking up at all hours of the night?

mentat 12y ago
Don't be an ass. He's logging the "down for the night" and "up for the day" times. This isn't some objective truth.
- dang 12y ago
  Please don't be personally rude on Hacker News. This comment would be best with just the middle sentence.
  - mentat 12y ago
    If you think the original comment is not offensive I don't think you're paying attention.
    - dang 12y ago
      That may be, but the rule of not being personally rude holds regardless.
      - mentat 12y ago
        So we're not allowed to call people out when they are in fact being asses. (And this was originally intended in the donkey sort of ass way, indicating rudeness.) This seems amazingly arbitrary.
bdamm 12y ago
I wondered that as well, actually. Lots of folks seem to be able to arrange for help but when my son was born it was just my wife and I. Our families were not able to help in any meaningful way. So we slept when the baby slept, were awake when the baby was awake, and traded care in shifts as much as possible. This fellow may be lucky and may have some additional help. In my case, I usually had the 2-6am shift. His kid is very cute and looks quite alert! So whatever the care is I would say it's working fine for them. Didn't see any photos of the parents.