This decade seems to be heading towards an endless whirlpool of privacy breaching, mind controlling trend which appears to have the power to lure more and more audience without any deeper reflections upon issues such as: How is this going to invade my personal space? Do I really want people to know what I do, what clips I watch and where I spend my time?
“Shocked, revolted and frightened”… That is exactly how I felt after having read this article posted yesterday at Techcrunch entitled “First Look: We Take YouTube RealTime For A Spin”
And now I’m screaming out loud: What is this world coming to?
With the wide range of “stalking tools” now available at everybody’s finger tips, we can now track the physical location of our “friends” using Google Latitude, follow up on what they are doing through Twitter text-based messages, find photos of you and your friends that are not tagged via Facebook Face Recognition and further have the power to know who is watching what and when through the latest trailing device Youtube Real-time!
Thinking about this issue, I can’t help but wonder: Why do we call for human rights and fight endlessly for our right to privacy when we, willingly, fly into the nests of freedom-free boundaries? Is technology so overwhelmingly seductive that we can’t but welcome it with open arms and allow it to take over what is rightfully ours?
To be fair, allow me to talk about my personal experience regarding this matter. Since I turned 16, I have been more than uptight about anyone asking me about my whereabouts, it used to annoy me! I also used to hate it when people used to constantly nag to know what is bothering me and why. Yet, with the introduction of the “almighty” Facebook and the status feeds, I found myself sucked into the cycle of letting people know when I’m down and why without them even asking. I am also confident that if I hadn’t taken a moment to reflect on what Google Latitude is about, I would have allowed others to know where I am without feeling stalked!
Personally, I think the fact that we are trained to believe that we have a choice whether to use a certain service/tool or not is the most alluring trap of all! But if everyone else is using it, do we really have a choice?
Think about it!
Note: Thank you Adam Zyglis for the cartoon.
