User:Eleanorg/1.2/Dave Young's thoughts on Physical Hosting

Dave carried an SD card in his wallet over one weekend, sealed within brown paper. He was given the choice of whether or not to open it, to discover the card's contents.

Firstly (and obviously), it made me think quite a bit about the 'ethics of data storage', or at least the conceptual processes involved in deciding to host, or not to host. I experienced two versions of this over the weekend: my first thoughts were that I would leave the card in my wallet and not check its contents. I suppose this is the equivalent attitude of the majority of data storage companies - data is assumed innocent until reported otherwise. In this case, the fact that you are 'hosting' is easy to forget about. The data remains abstract/imaginary. The second version: I was thinking about your project again on Sunday, and thought about another king of hosting - that is, knowing exactly what the content is, and then deciding whether you can host it or not. So evaluating the data and deciding whether it fits in with a personal Terms of Service. When I saw the censored image the data gained visual form and meaning, and as a result the 'act of hosting' for me became a very conscious act. In this instance, the 'host' is not a passive participant but in knowing the contents becomes implicit and actively responsible for keeping the data in their possession.

Otherwise, in the unlikely case that I would have been the victim in a mysterious mistaken identity murder case over the weekend, I can only imagine how puzzled the police would have been by the SD card with the strange contents, wrapped in brown paper, tucked away in my wallet.