So just as web two point oh is gaining momentum, web three point oh starts to pop into the news and cruely becomes the insiders upper hand in a tech savy conversation.
It is strange living and working in Cape Town asking clients if they have heard of YouTube, and it definitely makes one feel isolated or disoriented when they haven’t. But that's not what this is about.
I am now a new member of Facebook. What a thing. Forget SA Reunited, or Friends Reunited or wherever it was that allowed you to get in touch with others online. Facebook is it. This is just one of the new things that is the start of web 3.0: A consistent online identity.
Since 1996, when I was first requested to register at a website, I have had an "online identity" of some kind. But this information was not always close to the truth. Something that was maybe a mixture of my Mother's maiden name and my first dogs first name. But never my real name. Today, its actually quite tiring filling in forms for web features, but its what we do. The problem is that I've never really lost that paranoia about hitting the signup button without really reading the terms and conditions page. And afterall, what choice do you really have?
Maybe it was the fact that I watched "meeting people is easy" at a young age and heard Thom Yorke say: "You are on at least 300 databases that you don't know about" that made me a little skittish .
Hey, I’m on at least 300 that I do know about. So what's with this constant requirement for my personal data and my relunctancy to hand it over?
I don’t know. But one thing is for sure, your data is already out there, stored and cataloged in some places you know about, and others you don’t. How you manage it is up to you.
This is a question that we will have to answer sooner or later: How much are we willing to give up to the network? Because eventually it will be everyware.
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technorati tags:Paraniod, Andriod, Facebook, Web3, Radiohead, identity, databases
4 comments:
Interesting post.
Perhaps it was living in the UK for the last two years that has given me such a distaste for surveillance societies.
Perhaps it was growing up with lefty parents in the old South Africa, but I persist in maintaining multiple identities online.
You can always use a tool for more than it was designed for. Particularly if you lied about what it was for in the first place.
I like swimming in the transparency of it all. I feel kinda safe in the knowledge that the systems won't ever be able to cope with the volume i.e. 'they' can't watch everyone ALL of the time. They try to. Just look at the London transport System and CCTV systems.
Maybe i'm being ignorant, but if I am, I'm trying to improve.
Great post, btw.
You might find this interesting: http://identity20.com/media/OSCON2005/
Well no, you can't watch it live, but what you can do is record it and store it and search it. London's CCTV system is being rolled out nationally in the UK, and the requirement is that footage be stored for 3 years. (wouldn't you like to work in *that* datacentre?)
Also bear in mind that a large number of traffic offences are now ticketed and fined automatically without human input or oversight, the technology is simply that good.
But if you'd really like something to keep you up at night, read this:
Read My Lips
They're looking at adding computerized lipreading to the CCTV system to identify "terrorists".
Yeah, ok tell me all the information you sign up with is completely true. I dont believe we you.
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