Benjamin Franklin said, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” This will be a short post because your time will be better spent reading the attached article and giving it some serious thought.
Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, was interviewed recently. Mr. Schmidt said he believed that every young person will one day be allowed to change their name to distance themselves from embarrassing photographs and material stored on their friends' social media sites. He also predicted that in the future, Google will know so much about its users that the search engine will be able to help them plan their lives.
Did you read that? Mr. Schmidt said Google will know so much about its users that the search engine will be able to help them plan their lives. Are you okay with this? Do you understand what he is saying? Google has, and will continue to amass information on us. And they intend to use that information to tell us what we want to do next, buy next and eat next.
Take a look at this article, and then leave a comment for me. I want to know what you think.
Remember that Eric Schmidt is just offering his “personal prediction” with regard to something that his own company MIGHT be able to do. As with any CEO’s comments about his own company ego / bravado are included in the comment. While Google does acquire data over time it is interesting to note that people will simply hand out and reveal more information about themselves on Facebook and similar social network products than Google could ever dream of acquiring through its indirect and ancillary type processing.
Lose of privacy is INHERENT in the use of the Internet and conveniences it provides, regardless of what services you use. It’s much like getting a picture of your license, your car and its driver recorded forever by an E470 toll collection station. This happens solely for the convenience of not having to stop at the toll booth, yet you have forever lost the privacy of being able to drive that road in an anonymous fashion.