| In a word: yeah. There are definitely things going on that should concern you from at least a privacy point of view, not to mention a general "always-tethered, wirelessly, life." Putting that thought aside for a moment, a significant worry is being able to jump on board this train and survive among your peers, your managers, and your children. Certainly through other times in history we have seen major industrial and computer revolutions create a massive paradigm shift in our lives. This one may be different. This one may come on faster and stronger and more quickly separate the connected from the unconnected. The automobile was a notable invention. Not everyone could have one. Those who did had more freedom and flexibility; however, there were not many paved roads and not many gas stations, so the new freedom was bridled. The automobile revolution (if you could call it that) actually took decades, and steadily (but slowly) adoption rose and infrastructure matched the needs. The computer revolution was not too much different. It did not happen overnight either. Computers were around in business back offices running operations all through the late 1960s and through the 1970s. During the 1980s, they started to enter our homes, and through the 1990s they became pervasive on every business desk and home alike. Someone born in the 1960s was 30 years old by the time computers truly became pervasive. Hardly overnight. The Internet adoption appeared faster (and it was faster, to some extent). Most people do not realize that the Internet was quite heavily in use in the government, military, and public spaces throughout the 1980s and 1990s. So, to many of us, it seemed like the Internet started taking hold in the mid 1990s and by the turn of the century was a completely pervasive tool. In either case, it was well under 30 or even 20 years, but not as fast as 3 or 5 years. Regarding adoption rates, what should we expect from this impending move to wireless-everything and data-everywhere watching-everything? Rapid. Like pet-rock rapid, except that it will not go away after adoption peaks. Because of the reasons laid out many times in this book, this forthcoming revolution has advantages of a well-oiled machine and five billion hungry lions that will enable it to come in faster and more pervasively than prior revolutions. Although we have talked about the low cost of the new technology and the high business value as well as ease of exploitation, there is one more element that will significantly drive penetration rates: our youth generation. Prior revolutions had to mostly entice the wealthy large corporations or wealthy consumers first and then slowly move more mainstream. (You may recall the 1980s when microwave ovens and VHS players were mostly for the upper middle class; today, hardly anyone goes without a cell phone or broadband regardless of class or age.) This revolution is different. Our kids can afford the same technology that our businesses can, and they relish the opportunity to exploit and overuse and perhaps misuse it...because it is cool and fun and because they can. We see it today. Kids are the number one cell phone text-messaging user. They probably rack up the most cell minutes as well (among the nonbusiness reimbursed group). They are playing massive multiplayer online role playing games in stunning numbers (when most of us still can't even spell MMORPG). They are using (if not defining) groupware tools to a level of comfort that is dizzying to the nonconnected among us. The point is this: Other revolutions took timedecades typicallyso you had plenty of time to get prepared to go mainstream. Technology changes, in general, have a natural habit of coming on faster and more furious as time goes by. But this time it is a bit different because many of the drivers of Inescapable Data are available to our children and completely embraceable by them. They are not only growing up in Internet times but are walking around deeply understanding XML, wireless connectivity, and can coordinate more trigger squeezes on a complex Nintendo controller while most of us struggle thumbing text messages with a cell phone. The business productivity tools and life-efficiency tools of the coming future are more synergistic with our kids than with us. Growing up, what did our home and personal lives share with our parent wage earner? A stapler, perhaps a phone, and it would be a stretch to say a typewriter. So, your first worry should be how fast can you understand and embrace the onslaught of data devices and connectivity technology compared to eager younger wage earners. Your next set of worries may include the following: Insurance. You should worry about an inability to be insured without forgoing a level of privacy never considered before. Has your homeowner's insurance company already called you if you own a backyard trampoline and threatened cancellation? This is actually happening now. Imagine if they knew every time you bought Ginsu knives, or carbohydrate-laden bread, or a windsurfer. They need to manage their risk, and the more they know about what you do, the more profitable they can be. How about medical insurance? Your genome might fairly accurately predict the cost of your longer-term health care. Won't the medical insurers try to charge a premium if you are predisposed to certain illnesses? After all, it will certainly cost them more to take care of you and they can demonstrate actuals to their point (and thus justify to regulators a difference in rates). Why should Healthy Sally pay more for insurance if she's perfectly normal and has certifiable evidence to that fact, simply to balance those who aren't? Might the insurers forcefully restrict elements of your lifestyle such as particular food consumption and insist on being tied into your food purchases for verification? You could choose an insurer that might not have such invasive requirementsor could you, if the price is 1,000 times higher? Do you not already choose the "higher-deductible" option on your automotive insurance because you know you are a good driver? Won't you similarly be tempted to select the better insurance value because you are in fact a nonsmoker who does indeed go to the gym twice a week and seldom eat sausage so why not let them know that you are who you claim to be...? Is this goodness or worry? Identity theft. You should worry about identify theft on such a grand and comprehensive scale that it might be impossible to prove you are you. The new world will most assuredly use more and more biometric information, such as retinal scans and thumbprints, to help us identify ourselves. The trouble is, such information seems to imply a presumption of fact, that when the unique information itself is stolen or altered, it may be impossible to disprove. Could you not seeing the following conversation: Gates to Fund Manager: "I'd like to withdraw a few billion dollars." Fund Manager: "I'm sorry, Mr. Gates, but you're not truly the real Mr. Gates." Gates: "Sir, look into my eyes, rescan my retina, rescan my thumbs, ask me my mother's maiden name." Fund Manager: "We've done that. We know you're someone else. We have comprehensive tamper-proof records. Why, we triple encode our records with 2,000-bit encryption even the government is afraid to use and our data is replicated to 14.5 different global servers, including the space station and the new Mars colony. The real Gates's all-electronic records show that his thumbprints and retinal scans, done yearly, have not changed a single bit for the past 30 years." The point is this: Although most of the advances in secure transactions and identity will benefit us, when broken, it will be broken real bad. Marketeers. Marketing professionals will be able to reach you to an uncomfortable level. You allowed this at first because of the promise of better prices and more personalized service and products. You sold your soul, and now you must be part of their machine or they'll cut you off. They will have more ability to reach you directly (as will your spouse or children). You will dream of the days when your biggest annoyance was merely a telemarketer calling during dinner. Now, you need to take their surveys (wirelessly, of course, but quite immediate because they need the information right away), you need to respond to their instant messages as you enter their stores, and you need to allow yourself to be monitored and watched. If you don't, you will not have affordable access (if any access at all) to their goods. They want you to be a partner in their corporation; because, after all, you truly are the riches of their life. Would you not similarly exploit ways to be closer to your customers? Work life. You should worry that this extreme blending of personal and business life ultimately means that you work continuously. Sure, it started off that you could be at your child's bus stop more often and seldom miss a soccer game, but it turned out that you never actually "watched" the swim meet, no longer waved as the school musical started, and hardly ever swam while on vacation...because you were too engrossed in that new full-immersion (yet see-through) helmet with touchless keying per your mere thoughts. Although that helmet might be a decade a way or more, we can already see the beginning of devices that capture our constant attention no matter where we are. Using your PDA in the bathroom today is not outrageous anymore. Synagogue or church is not off limits. Certainly, restaurants and bars too often have patrons engaged with their wireless device (but we'll note, at least less distractingly as we move away from voice communication). We have squeezed more time out of our busy lives, but have we blurred our lives beyond being life? Unreal sports. We might worry that sports of the future become completely virtual if not artificial. We are inching there now. Even while physically at a game, we now find ourselves distracted by the pull of whatever handheld device is near us. We find that our biggest interest in professional sports is not how a given city's team is doing but rather how their player's contribution effects our virtual team's situation. Might we choose to stop going to games? Might we care only about our own personalized sports situation? Might it not even matter if the players themselves are real, much like it doesn't matter in Dungeons and Dragons? Perhaps the online virtual games will simply take over our "sports needs." People. We might worry that people we care about might start to know more about us than we desire them to. As we pass people in the hallways at work or in the mall or on the street, they might be able to "absorb" data about our clothes, where we shop, how much we paid, and maybe even our food preferences. When they enter our house and simply walk near our medicine cabinet, they may know more about our medical life than we would like. Our "virtual" cube neighbors in the workplace may now know every project we ever worked on and exactly how well we performed. Our next employer may as well. Our friends at a dinner party might giggle as they see into our previous night's adventures at the Halloween party by virtue of our global calendar absorbing cell photographs automatically into our public view.
But in perspective...yes, there are worries, and the issues raised above (and a great deal more) need to be seriously considered. But simply because these (very real) issues are possible, we must not attempt to run and hide. The introduction of the automobile was not without horrible consequences, even to this day ... cars crash and people get very hurt. Should we not use cars because of that? Can you imagine a world without cars? Can you imagine a world without computers? Or a world without cell phones for that matter? Our children will not be able to imagine a world without the massive conveniences that the new wireless and connected world brings us. Our employers will not imagine going back to less-productive times. Our deep interest in medical knowledge and military prowess will not imagine going back to the days of guesswork and exposure. So, the grandness of "data everywhere" (wirelessly) will come upon us, and it is our responsibility to be careful and cognizant of both the downsides and the upsides. |
