Should You Fear the iPhone?
Seth Godin claims to have coined a new term, Clowd (though a quick google search makes this questionable), and defines it as:
“…combining crowd and cloud into something new.”
Basically, it is the idea of the “tagcloud” and “crowd sourcing” blended together. His excitement over the Clowd is due in large part to yesterday’s announcement that the new iPhone will have very accurate GPS tracking capabilities – thus, should you chose, your friends (and enemies) can know your relatively precise location at all times. As Seth points out, this has all sorts of benefits:
“…it can tell you when your old friend is just two gates away from you, also wasting time at the airport waiting for her flight. Or it can do Zagats to the ten thousandth power by not only suggesting the best nearby restaurant (based on your food circle of friends) but can also integrate with Open Table and only recommend restaurants that actually have room for you.”
Call me crazy, but does this sound like a bad idea to anyone else? Sure, it might be cool to be able to find friends you didn’t know were in the neighborhood but do you really want everyone you know to wonder what you were doing down by the docks at 4 in the morning?
Ok, so you can opt out of this service, or only let certain people know, but what’s going to happen when some friends learn they have that access while others don’t? This will be the new status symbol.
And what about couples? Isn’t this pretty much like have a fulltime private eye going everywhere your significant other goes? And what if you tell your mate you’d rather now give them that sort of access? Isn’t that tantamount to admiting you’re a lying cheating bastard?
Well, kids, say hi to the new iPhone and wave goodbye to your last shreds of privacy…
Related articles
- How Your Location-Aware iPhone Will Change Your Life [IPhone] [via Zemanta]
- WWDC: Developers see big potential in iPhone apps [via Zemanta]
Tags: Bono, GPS, Handhelds, iphone, Open Table, Product Red, Smartphones, Zagats
Uncategorized | admin | 
June 10, 2008 2:56 pm
Subscribe