Future Technologies, Ideas & Opinions
Telltale contrails. Discuss
By Charlie on 22 September 2009
BOSTON, USA – When a plane crosses high up in the clear sky, it sometimes leaves behind a trail of conensed vapor, called a contrail. Some days, you can look up and see contrails crisscrossing the sky, revealing patterns for those who know how to look for them.
For a long time now, our mobile devices have been watching us and, in some ways, leaving a contrail of our paths behind us. This contrail could be broadcast by the various radios the devices carry, or by some app communicating continuously (or even intermittently) to some box out in the Cloud.
A recent article (see below) got us wondering how far we want to take this permission we give devices to leave these trails.
Big Brother in your pocket
When Nokia released Nokia Lifeblog back in 2004, we used to say that the phone was watching everything we did, so why not make a piece of software that allowed us to easily lay out those activities in a visually appealing multimedia diary? While the focus was on a PC app, we all were busting our brains to think of this online. Indeed, the blogging component was a manual version of that.
But what would the world be like if we could just stream our life to the Cloud?
There’s no end to what the sensor-in-a-pocket model could bring, as exemplified by Jamais Cascio’s list [via experientia].
Sensors for everyone
And we’ve been seeing an expectation that a ubiquity of sensors will somehow make life simpler. Except, a comment by Adam Greenfield (who has written oodles on this) made us think twice. The issue is that, even in the aggregate, patterns can emerge that can help folks reveal specific patterns and relationships once thought of as anonymous.
And a recent article in the Boston Globe on guessing who is gay on Facebook, serves as proof-point for Adam’s comment.
Yes, we might not even see or understand the contrails we put out. In the let-it-hang-out world of the Web, we are indeed leaving patterns of contrails that those who know what they are looking for can read, understand, and then make apparent for whatever purpose they might have.
What do you think of this?
Image from kevindooley
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September 22nd, 2009 at 1:25 pm
I’m anticipating a backlash of lifestreaming in about 10 years or so when little Johnny crawls online to find old photos of Mommy drunk in the bushes, and Daddy using swear words on his Twitter account.
Parents will remind their kids on the dangers of lifestreaming, just as our generation’s parents reminded us of the dangers of drugs.
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September 22nd, 2009 at 1:55 pm
I think having this as a private system, where only friends or just yourself can look up the information, is obviously sensible. Even if you’re the only one who can read the information, having it all there can be handy.
For example I might see something interesting while I’m walking about. I might recall the incident later, but not recall where I was. I do remember that I was looking at such-and-such an article on my handset, or that I had just listened to a certain track, or had bought some milk. So I could dig through the contrail and check where I was when I looked at the site/played the track/bought the milk, and then open up street view to figure out what I was looking at.
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Nuno Pereira Reply:
September 22nd, 2009 at 6:31 pm
I don’t think it should ever exist.
Call me retro, but i think that private life should remain private.
Big Brother is out there, and the last thing i want him to see is who my friends are.
I’m a fan of technologie, and i like the concept of social networks (i think social networks are still too imature, despite others opinion. I’m expecting to see even more evolution in this matter), but i don’t agree with sensitive data in “The Cloud”(a cloud full of hackers, etc). Forget it.
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