Surveillance,Privacy and the Ethics of Vehicle Safety Communication Technologies

Recent advances in wireless technologies have led to the development of intelligent, in-vehicle safety applications designed to share information about the actions of nearby vehicles, potential road hazards, and ultimately predict dangerous scenarios or imminent collisions. These vehicle safety communication (VSC) technologies rely on the creation of autonomous, self-organizing, wireless communication networks connecting vehicles with roadside infrastructure and with each other. As the technical standards and communication protocols for VSC technologies are still being developed, certain ethical implications of these new information technologies emerge: Coupled with the predicted safety benefits of VSC applications is a potential rise in the ability to surveil a driver engaging in her everyday activities on the public roads. This paper will explore how the introduction of VSC technologies might disrupt the “contextual integrity” of personal information flows in the context of highway travel and threaten one’s “privacy in public.” Since VSC technologies and their related protocols and standards are still in the developmental stage, the paper will conclude by revealing how close attention to the ethical implications of the remaining design decisions can inform and guide designers of VSC technologies to create innovate safety applications that increase public safety, but without compromising the value of one’s privacy in public. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation PORTIA Grant No. CNS-0331542, and could not have been completed without the valuable guidance of Prof. Helen Nissenbaum (New York University) and Prof. Dan Boneh (Stanford University). I am grateful to many other colleagues who generously contributed to this work with excellent comments and suggestions, including Emily Clark and Steve Tengler at the VSCC, and Sam Howard-Spink, Joseph Reagle and Tim Weber at New York University. Drafts were further sharpened through opportunities to present at colloquia and conferences sponsored by New York University’s Department of Culture & Communication, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society for Philosophy and Technology, and Computer Ethics: Philosophical Enquiry.     

No evidence for overshadowing or facilitation of spatial pattern learning by visual cues

Two experiments were conducted to examine the effects of redundant and relevant visual cues on spatial pattern learning. Rats searched for hidden food items on the tops of poles that formed a square (Experiment 1) or a checkerboard (Experiment 2) pattern. The experimental groups were trained with visual cues that specified the locations of the baited poles. All groups were tested without visual cues so that any overshadowing or facilitation of spatial pattern learning by visual cues could be detected. Spatial choices were controlled by the spatial pattern and by the visual cues in both experiments. However, there was no evidence of overshadowing or facilitation of spatial pattern learning by visual cues in either experiment. The results are consistent with the idea that the representation of the spatial pattern that guides choices is not controlled by the same learning processes as those that produce associations between visual cues and food locations.     

Competence and performance in causal learning

The dominant theoretical approach to causal learning postulates the acquisition of associative weights between cues and outcomes. This reduction of causal induction to associative learning implies that learners are insensitive to important characteristics of causality, such as the inherent directionality between causes and effects. An ongoing debate centers on the question of whether causal learning is sensitive to causal directionality (as is postulated by causal-model theory) or whether it neglects this important feature of the physical world (as implied by associationist theories). Three experiments using different cue competition paradigms are reported that demonstrate the competence of human learners to differentiate between predictive and diagnostic learning. However, the experiments also show that this competence displays itself best in learning situations with few processing demands and with convincingly conveyed causal structures. The study provides evidence for the necessity to distinguish between competence and performance in causal learning.     

Diagrammatic Reasoning as the Basis for Developing Concepts: A Semiotic Analysis of Students' Learning about Statistical Distribution

In recent years, semiotics has become an innovative theoretical framework in mathematics education. The purpose of this article is to show that semiotics can be used to explain learning as a process of experimenting with and communicating about one's own representations (in particular ‘diagrams') of mathematical problems. As a paradigmatic example, we apply a Peircean semiotic framework to answer the question of how students develop a notion of ‘distribution' in a statistics course by ‘diagrammatic reasoning' and by forming ‘hypostatic abstractions', that is by forming new mathematical objects which can be used as means for communication and further reasoning. Peirce's semiotic terminology is used as an alternative to concepts such as modeling, symbolizing, and reification. We will show that it is a precise instrument of analysis with regard to the complexity of learning and communicating in mathematics classrooms.     

Spatial patterns and memory for locations

Rats obtained food from the tops of vertical poles in a 5 × 5 matrix of locations. On each trial, the baited locations formed one of the two possible exemplars of a checkerboard spatial pattern. During training, locations that had been visited earlier in the trial were indicated by a visual cue. Following training, performance with and without the visual cues was compared. Spatial choices were controlled by the checkerboard spatial pattern. The visual cues enhanced the ability of rats to avoid revisits of locations. However, the visual cues did not enhance control by the spatial pattern, as would be expected if the same spatial memories were involved in avoidance of revisits and coding the location of baited locations.