Jim Harper

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.

October 8, 2007 | Comments |

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