Don't try to deny it. I know what you did last night!
One might expect that a line like that could only come from a
jealous wife who has had a private detective follow her straying
hubby, but soon it may come from your wallet or even your milk
carton!
Now that you've registered your site, you're almost ready
to start taking orders. Next, you need to accept credit
cards. Charge.Com lets you take MasterCard, Visa, American
Express, and Discover. They have the best rates, over 95% of
applicants are accepted, and there's NO APPLICATION FEE.
Why would your milk carton care what you did last night? It
doesn't, but it could soon "know" that you passed the
grocery store on the way home without picking up a fresh carton of
milk. It will simply ask the garage door opener which was told by
the car and then inform your briefcase which will remind your cell
phone to alert you tomorrow before you pass the market again.
Your checkbook will know your bank balance before you balance
it, so you won't need to balance it. Your car will insist that you
take it to the dealership for maintenance before it reaches the
mileage limit set by the manufacturer for required service to keep
the warranty intact. The Secretary of State (or Dept. of Motor
Vehicles [DMV] in some states) will be able to disable your car if
you fail to renew your registration or license.
All of this magic is possible now and in use in some cases.
Your world is very close to being automated, trackable and
recorded in a permanent database. Huge abuses are possible in this
strange new world and we need to establish boundaries and limit
access to this information before it gets out of those databases
and into any "unsavory" databases. I'll bet on the
newest action adventure movies in the next few months having
something to do with "Arnold" chasing down a good
database that was corrupted by an evil data warehousing software
developer.
I'm not a doomsayer, so I'll address these issues by suggesting
that we all remain aware, informed and alert to the possibility of
abuses so that we can stop them from occurring.
I am a technology enthusiast so I welcome these developments
for what they mean in terms of convenience and in making my life
easier. The wireless web, BlueTooth technology, embedded chips,
bar codes and information databases make it all easily do-able.
For those of you unfamiliar with BlueTooth technology let me
put in its simplest terms (limit of my own understanding) it
allows antyhing with this low frequency radio transmission to
"talk" with anything else with the same embedded
technology. This means that inanimate objects can communicate with
each other whenever they are within a specific physical proximity
to each other.
PRIVACY as we've known it in the past may be unattainable or
shall I say, un-maintainable. Public uproar at well publicized
issues such as the ToySmart.com database being sold as an asset in
its bankruptcy, when it had promised that information would never
be sold, illustrate how information on YOU could be sold, resold,
sold on the blackmarket, hacked from multiplicity of sources or
simply stored for access by big brother.
Suffice it to say that information, in the information economy,
has the value we used to assign to precious metals or gemstones.
When things have value, they are susceptible to theft, graft,
bribes and criminal abuses by bad guys. Information is golden and
precious. We need to define a new type of "Fort Knox"
for information sources. Security, encryption and permission
levels to access distribute, store and manage all types of
information that exists in millions of databases that could all be
easily merged.
I was told today of a web site that exists allowing you to send
snail mail to someone by entering their email address in a web
form. DoubleClick was thoroughly reamed for publicly announcing
their intention to merge online and offline databases for exactly
that ability, yet other companies are operating quietly without
public outcry. Because they are doing it without telling us.
"I know what you did last night" may soon be a
wonderful and welcome comment if it comes from your milk carton.
Let's just keep that information in the family of inanimate
objects and out of the hands of the government, criminals,
telemarketers and unsavory data warehousing software developers.
A recent privacy uproar concerns the public posting of ICQ logs
from the PC of a web company CEO concerning internal private
discussions over the instant messaging service.
In this case it was someone having access to the same PC that
led to the security breach, but it has fired discussions about how
instant messaging text is served and how and where it is stored
and who has access to those logs, how they might be accessed
externally and by whom and if they are encrypted.
This is the un-nerving side of ease of access to information
but there are also some seriously funny thoughts on privacy:
The link above will take you to a hilarious article describing
a "continuous series of detachable, 480x480-pixel square
displays, complete with Bluetooth wireless communications!"
This "display" innovation may get more personal than
you think since it comes as the newest version of "Free
Toilet Paper with Banner Ads".
