Is Privacy an Over-Rated Legacy of the Past?

The concept of privacy is a tricky one, to say the least.  Most people, when asked for a quick response would likely tell you that privacy is very important to them and that they are concerned about who has access to what they consider “private” data about them.

However, these very same people will create Facebook accounts, wander the web without using any sort of anonymous IP cloaking, send emails without encryption and speak loudly on their cell phones at crowded restaurants.  Many people are surprised to learn that things like your home address, phone number, email and endless other data is already freely (or at least) easily accessible to anyone handy with a few search engines and a database or two.

As we willingly share more and more information about our day-to-day lives via Twitter or Facebook status updates one has to wonder if we might not be better served giving up on this false sense of privacy and just open the floodgates.

As Matt Asay at CNet says:

Think about it. My in-box already knows where I’m traveling, what I buy, etc. because my receipts go there. If someone were to merge this data with my phone records (easily had for the price of my AT&T login credentials), my e-mail log, and my Twitter, IM, and social network data, they’d know exactly who I know and where I’m likely to bump into them…I’d love to automatically be told that my good friend Mike is in London at the same time as I am, and have a service suggest a reservation at a favorite restaurant (which it would know through my past OpenTable reservations). I’d “pay” for that by giving up a lot of data.        LINK

At first glance, this sounds crazy to a lot of people but the question is whether it is more valuable to you to keep your travel plans secret or to make them widely available as a potential way to add value to your travel.  We are already targeted by advertisers for our social behavior and choices made both online and offline, so it’s not especially new, at least in concept, that our personal data could and should be used in this manner.

The larger question is whether or not the whole concept of “privacy” is really just a social concept that is undergoing a major shift.  I am sure that the views on privacy from a sixty-year-old are radically different from those of a twelve-year-old.

A Fake Prison Break and the Power of Projection

Hot on the heels of my post about the potential uses for ever-smaller and more powerful video projectors comes a great example out of Holland.

It seems a Dutch magazine used video projection to make a point about a the growing issue of prison breaks in Belgium:

The video depicts a group of young guys hastily getting together a projector to fake a prisoner climbing out of his window in a famous prison complex called Bijlmerbajes.            LINK

See the video for yourself below and just try to imagine where this could go next…

According to the AP, this Post Should Cost Me Over $60

In an attempt to demonstrate just how absurd the AP’s new plan is for charging bloggers who want to quote five words from an article $12.50, I present to you what the AP would like to charge more than $60 for me to share with you:

“is good for the economy” – LINK

“didn’t approve the full amount sought” – LINK

“believed to have been arrested”  LINK

“engaged in tit-for-tat attacks, but”  LINK (note: unclear on charge for hyphenated words…)

“World War II may be over”  LINK

Yup, I certainly feel like I’ve gotten my money’s worth.  You?

Will Cell Phone Video Recorders and Handheld Projectors Cause Mayhem and Joy?

When the iPhone 3Gs came out, YouTube noted a very fast uptick in the number of mobile videos being posted to the site.  It doesn’t hurt that one can post with just one click directly from the iPhone.  While not the first phone able to do this, it is certainly one with a large and fast-growing user base and while they are leading the way other makers will be forced to offer similar features soon.

Now, add to the mix the emergence of powerful, pocket-sized video projectors that can operate on battery power and project images the size of a large-screen TV onto any flat surface. Still in their early stages, these projectors will improve over time and it can’t be long until anyone with the equipment can beam billboard-sized video onto the wall of their choice.

Now, combine these two devices and try to imagine the possibilities:

1) A major riot breaks out in a big city.  Someone sees an act of police brutality. They film it with their phone and then, before you can say “hey, you” the footage is beamed onto the wall of a building for the whole crowd to see.

2) A group of people are waiting in line for tickets to a new film.  A young filmmaker gives those in line a preview of his own latest work, beamed onto the side of the cinema itself. For free.

3) More scary, advertisers arm workers with short video ads and ask them to walk around town and beam them on any wall near a crowd.

I could just keep going and going.  I don’t even want to think out the new laws that will be created and the absurd policing to follow.

And we haven’t even discussed just beaming it live…

AP Accelerating It’s Own Demise with Misguided Plans

Today’s blogs are all afire writing about the latest twist in the AP’s comical and borderline pathetic attempts to shore up its broken and obsolete business model: charging outrageous fees to anyone looking to quote FIVE WORDS OR MORE from an AP article.

Should you read an AP article and want to quote it in a blog post you are asked to click on a “copyright use” link that leads you to this:

Now, I don’t want to guess what the AP thinks it can charge me for using this image.  The fact is, just because they charge doesn’t change the principle of “fair use” and this image is being used so that I can critique it’s absurdity.

The bigger problem, if you are the AP, is that everything about this policy is counter to the way information is consumed and shared in the modern, digital age.  The AP can bitch and moan all they want to about the “good old days” but that doesn’t make time move backwards.

As the ability for people to  both gather and distribute news around the globe grows, the question is not what will the AP do in some misguided attempt to protect its work from being shared but why do we really need the AP at all.  If the AP disappeared tomorrow news would continue to be reported and most people wouldn’t notice anything had happened.

That’s not a good sign for the AP.

Related articles by Zemanta

• I for one welcome AP’s war on links and fair use (inquisitr.com)
• By The AP’s Own Logic, The AP Ripped Off Obama (techdirt.com)
• Quote 5 Words From the Associated Press? That’ll Be $12.50 (mashable.com)

iPhone Will Track Your Happiness

Someday we will all be asking ourselves, “what did we do before our cell phones told us what make’s us happy?”

Thanks to Matt Killingsworth, a doctoral candidate in psychology at Harvard University, iPhone users may now take part in a completely free study exploring just what it is that makes us happy:

To participate, volunteers sign up for the experiment through the study’s Web site, fill out an introductory survey and schedule the number of times each day they want to be alerted by an e-mail message or text message reminding them to take another survey. Periodically, volunteers are also provided with a “happiness report” that could provide some insight into the factors — like amount of sleep, exercise and other daily activities — that affect their own happiness.

“The more that people adhere to it, they more they will learn about themselves,” he said.         LINK

Not only will your data help the overall experiment, but you will also receive personalized reports on what make you happy.

One might argue that iPhone owners, as a sample pool, are already a skewed group, but I love the use of the device in the name of science.

Kinda makes that iFart app look a little more pointless…