Source: Muhammad Mahdi Karim (see usage note below)
We've been reading a lot recently about the impact of modern communications and surveillance technologies on individual privacy. I've been collecting news accounts from various media sources and have assembled a picture of the implications of technology evolution for individual privacy in the western world (particularly the U.S.).
Imagine a day in which...
- Every phone call you make and every email you send can be monitored by governmental authorities in real time...
- Every click of your computer mouse, and every location you visit with your internet browser can be recorded and analyzed not only be governmental authorities, but by private companies as well...
- Your internet buying habits are tracked and analyzed by e-commerce entities without your knowledge...
- The camera and microphone on your computer and your telephone can be activated without your knowledge by nameless hackers...
- If you carry a cell phone, every movement you make during the day can be tracked (with resolution in some cases down to a few feet) by governmental and private concerns...
- Every trip you make in your automobile can be tracked by governmental surveillance cameras...
- Your medical records (eventually including your personal DNA / genome map) are stored electronically online and can be accessed by anybody who wants them badly enough...
- Every click of your TV remote and your detailed TV viewing habits are monitored by your cable TV provider and the "meta-data" can/is sold to advertisers and content providers...
- Your minute-by-minute household electricity usage (and all that can be inferred from it) are known to your electric utility...
- You (and unknown hackers) can control major appliances in your home from afar via telephone and internet...
- Your buying habits at local retailers can be tracked in detail (do you think those "rewards" come with "no strings attached" ? )
This is enough to give pause to even the most ardent technoholic.
Especially when one understands that "day" is TODAY...
Yes... all of the above and more are actually happening TODAY, if the avalanche of news media accounts are to be believed...
We are evolving to a point in which every individual, as we go about our daily lives, is creating a highly intimate, dynamic, and enormously-large "life data cloud" or "life data echo" (my terms). Furthermore, unless current trends are halted, much (perhaps most or all) of this data can and will become commoditized, packaged as a data product, and either voluntarily or involuntarily made available to society.
This isn't simply "Big Data". This is "Huge Data".
Most of what we as individuals know, and most of who we are, will become "common property". Our lives will, literally, become an open book for all to read...
What has this to do with honey bees?
I used to keep honey bees. They are wonderful and fascinating creatures. When a honey bee returns to its hive, it brings its cargo of food and collected treasures. But it also does a "data dump". The worker bee conveys to the collective hive all it knows of value about its surroundings – thus allowing the entire hive to benefit from its individual life and effort. Every worker bee is, in essence, both a "sensor / detector" and a source of effort for a collective community of individuals – each born and destined for a specific role in the community.
Bee hives and bee colonies are indeed a source of something wonderful and highly valued by man. But honey bees (1) surrender their personal identities for the "good of the hive"; and (2) when honey bees die, they are carried out of the hive and their bodies non-ceremoniously dropped off the front porch.
This makes we wonder about where we are headed as a society. Aren't we beginning to look more and more like a bee hive?
Just thinking...
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