Call me weird, but I don't like the idea of an external system telling my dishwasher what time to run itself.
What's it going to do next, turn off my lights when it determines I don't need them?
I will heartily admit to the immense debt of gratitude that I personally owe to Google and . . .those other search engines, whoever they are. Without them, I could not find information. (Hold that thought). Or perhaps, I could find the information, but it would take 3 weeks. But I'm starting to get creeped out by some of the functions that Google is creating.
First, they want to put all my medical information online. Ok . . . .why is this necessary? Convenient, perhaps - but necessary? What assurances are they going to give me that these files are being controlled, and that this sort of sensitive information will not get leaked or misused? Don't call me paranoid. They cannot even keep my credit card number a secret at Marshalls. Top government agencies have information stolen. Why should I trust Google?
Then there's news about Google building massive data centers around the world (all details kept secret). Interesting. Ok, they want to be fast and have a competitive edge. That makes sense. But according to a story last month, they also want to eliminate your hard-drive, and store all of the information you currently have on your computer online. Again, what about security breaches?
Then, I go onto Google Maps one day and discover that anyone can see a panoramic picture of my street, down to the stuff the dog left on the pavement.
I just don't like that.
I don't like that someone from Antarctica - or someone who's a psycho - can type in my address and see the street that I walk down every day and count the number of windows on my house. You can dismiss that as a personal complaint. I would call it a privacy complaint. But more importantly, what about the terrorists who use this wealth of information to plan attacks on city infrastructures? Think about WWII movies back in the day. It used to be a big deal for people to get in a plane and get aerial pictures of a particular location. Now it's a click away. Is the technology bad in itself? No. But is our security system threatened by this new elevated and easily-accessible level of information? Arguably, yes. And have our security officers stepped up to the challenge of this new technology? That is left to be discovered.
It seems that every day there's a another piece of news about Google soaking up another section of information - books, geography, now energy consumption. All of these are useful and would help to streamline systems. But a red flag went up for me when I wrote the sentence in the first paragraph, that without Google, I could not find information (quickly). If you've ever studied Public Opinion and the ways that we know what we know, you know that information is power, and that information can be manipulated, and that the public is not best served by information monopolies.
It does not appear to be a good idea to allow a privately owned global corporation, without any oversight from what I can tell, to have access and broadcasting rights to so many areas of our lives and infrastructures - many of which rightfully fall into the "personal"or "private" category. Google is assuming the role of a giant vacuum cleaner, sucking up information and blowing it to the four winds for anyone to use or manipulate as they choose. I'm not calling for censorship: I'm calling for a consideration of what constitutes privacy, what gives Google the right to demand control over all of this information, and how exactly are they safeguarding the information we've handed over. In other words, who's moving the vacuum cleaner back and forth, why, and what do we really think about it? It's worth looking into.
