tom_thinks

Ok, its actually one article in two parts. Read You are who you know, and then read part 2 Way too much info to discuss it all here, and considering this blog isn't really about the subject, I'll keep it short. The article is about social software and presents some interesting ideas about it catching on, its usefulness and what it might mean for the future.Heres one exerpt that makes me think of a previous post about Baltimore's security cameras.

And that is exactly what an online social network enables. When we sign up on a social networking site, we are diving into the petri dish, and gladdening the heart of every scientist with a key to the lab. If the network can figure out what groups you are part of simply by the patterns of e-mail sent back and forth, imagine what it can learn when it knows every last bit of data you have input into a five-page profile, which might include everything from your favorite breed of dog, your sexual orientation and marital status, to your turn-ons, bedroom accessories, and tastes in music, movies and books?

But that's only the tip of the data iceberg. What if, in addition to that, it knows everything you've ever searched for on the world's most popular search engine, it has access to your blog and it has been scanning the content of your e-mails so as to better target ads to you? Researchers with access to that network -- to that online neighborhood where modern men and women spend ever greater amounts of their disposable time -- will know more about you than you do about yourself.

Big Brother might not have to try so hard to get an all encompassing file on someone if people are willingly providing the information. Could these social networks be linked to things such as surveillance cameras in the real world? <---Just my paranoia creeping in, the article doesn't really dwell on these issues. It does get into what this software means for the future of human interactions however. Ok one more quote (this is for you Chris)

The ensuing debut of Gmail, which for some raised the terrifying specter of e-mail content scanned so as to better allow targeted advertising, was followed by the revelation that Google was using the same software cookie to register user identities on all its services.
The alarm went out, across the blogs and mailing lists of the Net: A new 8,000-pound terror of privacy invasion had been born. Call it Googlezilla.
At first glance, Googlezilla is scary indeed. Google appears better positioned than any other Net service to successfully amass a truly staggering database of user behavior

I think I'll be deleting that cookie now.