From: Matt Norwood <mrn2101@columbia.edu>
  To  : <cpc@emoglen.law.columbia.edu>
  Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2006 23:13:52 -0500

Re: [CPC] Paper2: Letting Go of the Rogue Box of Cheerios

I concur with Pamela in her narrow conclusion: if our choice is between
Wal-Mart and Albertson's, then Wal-Mart will win, and Albertson's will
lose, as will all of us natural persons. And in my pessimistic moments,
I share her more general lack of faith in myself and my fellow citizens:
I worry that our convenience will always trump our enlightened
self-interest, even as the required degree of enlightenment approaches
zero.

But I do have more optimistic moments, and in those I imagine a social
and technological environment in which many of the current information
asymmetries are remedied and citizens have convenient access to as much
information about products and companies as companies have about them. I
like to believe that, in such a world, people would choose to check
unethical corporate practices with their own spending power; the
alternative is just too depressing.

I wrote a paper for Eben's "Law and the Internet Society" class last
year outlining a system to use just such an RFID-based inventory system
to allow citizens to make informed, responsible consumption choices. My
system was premised on the ability of users to control their own devices
rather than relying on hardware/software provided by the store (or by
proprietary interests aligned with the store's); if you're using a
scanner designed, run, or provided by Alberton's (or Microsoft, or
Motorola), you can hardly expect it to further your interests rather
than theirs.

My paper is here:

http://xenia.media.mit.edu/~rowan/memepark/2004/12/sauce-for-gander-viral-boycotts-and.html

Will users really take the time to scan their groceries and calculate
their social costs? This is, I think, a problem for designers and
usability engineers: people use new technologies if those technologies
can create compelling user experiences. People spend hours on MySpace
and AmIHotOrNot filling out surveys and reading about other people; I'm
not convinced that that same impulse couldn't be focused on examining
and rating corporate misconduct and product quality if the user
experience were properly designed.

Matt Norwood


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