Crowd Computing for Some: Weaving Threads of Privacy through Public Spaces

INTRODUCTION Crowd computing like the crowd itself – builds on the idea that humanity is greater than the sum of its parts. With such roots, it is understandable how crowd computing has typically focused on finding common ground – mutual goals like improving teaching or audience understanding (Griswold, Rekimoto), communicating individually with audience members or simply making the variety of opinions in diverse crowds known. However, designing for mutual goals leads towards unnecessary centralization and compromise over the objectives of a crowd. As crowd computing attempts to virtualize the benefits created by a crowd, things are taken a step too far, and crowds become constrained to a mere subset of their possible sums.