Who is the Most Important Person in the World? You!

Every time you turn around there is another service out there that will let you tell anyone willing to listen what you are thinking, doing, listening to or planning.

Now, with the new iPhone on the horizon, there is growing interest in using personal GPS as a way to let everyone know WHERE you are.

I find myself, a lover of all things tech, siding a bit with Steven over on Mashable:

“Some folks like MG Siegler from ParisLemon might think this is just the coolest idea that gets him all excited. I fail to see how seeing a constant stream of Brightkite announcements flooding social media services like Twitter and FriendFeed is not incredibly irritating. It’s not like knowing where you are every five or ten minutes is earth shattering news that we all need to know. If anything there are times when this kind of pollution makes me want to just close any window I have open to social media providers who support these location based services.”

Modern life is a constant give-and-take between privacy and convenience.  Sure, it would be great to get constant updates regarding the whereabouts of your friends, but do you really want that sort of information floating around for anyone to see?

It is going to be interesting to see if there is a large generational divide that emerges between the youth who see this sort of constant flow of personal data to be perfectly normal, and those a bit older who have always found a certain comfort in knowing their basic whereabouts are a private matter.

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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…

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