Society - Written Wednesday, March 17, 2010 by Tim Bevins - 0 Comments

On unintended consequences

Noted: According an interesting piece by McKinsey on the new Japanese consumer, big-box discounters outside Tokyo and retailers such as Costco and Ikea are benefitting significantly from a March 2009 decision by the Japanese government to reduce the maximum freeway toll on weekends to ¥1,000 (about $11) regardless of the distance traveled. More people than ever are now taking advantage of the lower prices of these stores outside their local living in part because a restriction has been lifted. It’s not the only reason they are shopping there – the recession is more important – but the stores probably may never have anticipated the effect on them.

Noted: danah boyd, in her address to open SXSW this month, related the following story: “I met a teen whose abusive father was recently released from jail. Recognizing that a restraining order would not be enough protection, the teen and her mother moved thousands of miles away. As the teen began making friends in her new school, she begged for a Facebook account. Her mother caved and both the daughter and mother worked to make the account as private as possible; neither of them wanted to face the consequences of being found. In December, when Facebook changed its [default] privacy settings [to Everyone], this teen and her mother didn’t realize what the change in privacy settings meant until someone else pointed them out after the fact. Is putting her at-risk an acceptable bi-product of Facebook’s changes?” Facebook has 400 million-plus apparently satisfied users; it would be devastating to two of them if, unintentionally, the impact of the change in privacy policy had not been communicated to them. Continue…