
Gartner picks digital ethics and privacy as a strategic trend for 2019 - RobertSmith
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/16/gartner-picks-digital-ethics-and-privacy-as-a-strategic-trend-for-2019/
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blakesterz
It's not often I think "librarians are way out in front of this trend!"

We've been crazy about privacy and "digital ethics" (though I'm not sure we've
ever used that phrase) forever, or at least as long as I've been a librarian.

Attorney General John Ashcroft actually picked a fight with the ALA years ago
over this kind of thing because of the PATRIOT act.

~~~
eksemplar
Really? In my country libraries did audiobooks before everyone except for
audible. They did movie streaming before everyone, including Netflix. They
digitised the way you order, rent and pick up books in a way that'd put most
digital retail to shame, and they did it before 2010.

They're almost exclusively open source, and they corporate across their sector
to build and use the same standards, even though their management is as split
up as everything else. I mean, I work in a muniplacity and we can't even agree
to buy a standard component for our intranet even tough we're mainly looking
for a new intranet because the old non-standardised component can't be
upgraded, and meanwhile, the libraries across the country have developed and
adopted universal standards for almost everything they do...

Libraries did service design and user based fail fast methods before anyone
else, and I think they're still one of the few business to actually succeed at
it.

They're really, really bad at marketing their successes though. Remember that
movie streaming thing I talked about in the beginning? Well, almost nobody
knows it exists. I bet, that none of the Danes who read this post will have
ever heard about
[http://biblioteket.filmstriben.dk](http://biblioteket.filmstriben.dk) .

~~~
blakesterz
"They're really, really bad at marketing their successes though."

Funny thing is we've been saying this for literally decades.

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olivermarks
The irony of Gartner commenting and appraising 'digital ethics' is rather
delicious...a common criticism of the company is that they are market makers
with their business model that both takes money from the companies they
appraise (who often also buy the rights to use the resulting glowing 'reports'
as marketing) and also from people who want to research a market segment.

There are lots of talented, perceptive people at Gartner but their business
model sails very close to the wind ethically.

Gideon Gartner never intended the notorious 'magic quadrant' to be so central
to their offerings but boy has it been a money spinner via marketing buys and
for exec powerpoint cut and paste graph proof points.

[https://youtu.be/g7zzl1RM02U](https://youtu.be/g7zzl1RM02U)

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saberworks
I'm afraid of this because I don't think the execution matches the marketing.
Sites like Ars Technica are wooing users into their subscriptions by promising
that they will not track you and they will not show you ads, but then if you
read their actual privacy policy they state very clearly that they sell their
subscriber list to 3rd parties, including any advertising company that wants
it.

I do own an iphone and I think they're 10x better (or more) than google at
privacy but it's clear that they still do slurp way too much data. I get it,
they're not intentionally selling it to 3rd parties but I'd rather they didn't
take it in the first place. Do they really need to record all my app store
searches? All my "news app" views? Can I please just opt out of that
altogether?

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Arubis
Does this mean I can include "have had strong opinions on the Internet; 25
years experience" on my résumé now?

While that sounds flippant, I'd actually love to have some input in this area;
it's long been an area of passion for me, but I don't have a law degree. Which
I suspect is true of a lot of people around these parts.

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binarymax
Make sure you pay the $25k now to get on the upper right of the quadrant.

~~~
irl_zebra
Can you expand on this comment? I'm running into Gartner more and more in my
current position and am wondering about how legitimate they are.

~~~
thrower123
Gartner has been sued about ranking companies that buy hefty consulting
services from them higher on its magic quadrant rankings than other companies
that don't. The case got dismissed[1] on other grounds, but the general sense
I've gotten anecdotally is that it kind of is a payola scheme.

[1]
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2017/09/29/can-n...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbloomberg/2017/09/29/can-
netscout-get-the-respect-it-deserves/)

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andreygrehov
See the list of predictions here:
[https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/gartner-
top-10-st...](https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/gartner-
top-10-strategic-technology-trends-for-2019/)

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thrav
Not surprising. Benioff has already created an official group internally to
try to address people’s issues and avoid losing employees.

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infocollector
Will that mean that technologies that are privacy centric will become
important for some reason?

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abakker
Not quite, but it does mean that there is now "board level" justification for
investing in these technologies. If Gartner says it, then it is important to
not be "left behind".

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chris_wot
Ethics and privacy have been trending... since the dawn of mankind.

~~~
Arubis
The Spanish Inquisition would disagree with you. This is an area where society
has slipped backwards before. I'd posit that the modern concept of privacy has
only been a thinkable thought for a handful of centuries.

~~~
chris_wot
Trending indicates it is continuously developing. So we started from nothing,
went to dreaful, then to bad, then got better. Now we have Trump.

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Jedi72
Gartner manager: Ok boys, we got approval, heres $600,000 now go do the 2019
strategic trends report

\-- 11 months 1 wk later --

Joe: "Oh dam lol hey bill whats trending top of HN atm"

