Jonas: Six Ticks till Midnight
It’s an interesting ‘blog post, but a little over the top. Jeff Jonas of IBM writes about the plausible steps that take us to a total surveillance society – by popular demand!
I think it’s over the top because he doesn’t factor in a number of countervailing trends. I attempted to catalog the (mostly economic) forces that would drive RFID to meet consumer interests (including privacy) in this paper a few years ago, for example. And a few weeks ago, I wrote about a version of privacy self-help touted by none other than Google CEO Eric Schmidt: Turn off your phone!
Jonas raises good things to think about – and it’s certainly the general direction we’re headed – but we aren’t going to end up in the midnight dystopia Jeff describes.
-
Don Marti
