Anyone that was around before the year 1984 knows that George Orwell was wrong about what our life might be like in that supposed futuristic year. Big Brother was not controlling every aspect of our life through advanced technology.
However, here in the year 2011 Big Brother is very active behind the scenes, or should I say Screens, Screens as in Computer Screens. Modern life as we know involves a large amount of Social Websites and all that is attached to them. Facebook, Google+ and Twitter are the front runners in the war on our E-Attention span. It would seem everywhere we turn things that were once a solid object, that we could hold in our hands, have now become electronic shadows of what they once were. Music Records & CDs are about to become E-downloads only. Experts say Gone are the days of shopping at record stores. Remember when you could take a picture and you could then hold it in your hand a few minutes later thanks to Kodak, now it's taken with a digital camera and uploaded to facebook for all your friends to admire. Never mind taking a picture that you might hang on a real wall in your home.
Ok, back to the point of this rant- Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Facebook have been using tracking cookies for years to gather personal information on your every move on the internet.
Microsoft< ever wonder why Windows wants to update every day ? Well, I can tell you that it is not to improve it's performance but to gather data from your computer.
If you track your processes during an update you'll find that more is being uploaded to the internet, than what is being downloaded to your computer. In fact very little is altered with Windows at all during one of these updates. Microsoft claims that it only uses this information for research, but why do they attach a user I.D. to your information so as to attach your personal information in a singular manner?
Google< they may be the worst of the bunch because recently they have admitted to selling your personal data to marketing groups seeking to get your money. You might think they are sharing your search results/surfing information but they also indicated that they shared your Email activity information to said marketers.
It doesn't stop there with Google, they also share your personal information with the government if your under investigation for nearly anything. When I say 'nearly anything' I point to a case where a divorce court used google information to show that one spouse had cheating intentions based on what they were searching for. Seems like an extreme way to go just to get a divorce.
Yahoo< like Google, Yahoo the search engine, Email and Instant Messenger are all part of information that Yahoo tracks about you as an individual. IP addresses, Mail settings and search results are being stored for marketing research by Yahoo.
Facebook< FB for years has been keeping records on everyone who has an account. Every 'like' you click on, every page you view and who you have for friends are kept as records for research. Now you might suspect that if your even a little bit computer savvy, but here is what you may not know - even when you log off Facebook tracks your movements. If your like me , you may be scratching your head about this one and wondering how ? Facebook installs tracking cookies on your computer which are then used to track your movements no matter if your logged in or not!
Consider the above information and ask yourself "where is this type of privacy invasion heading ?"
Will we one day conduct court cases online where witnesses are called to testify who never need to leave the confines of their own home?
Will new laws be created governing your every move online, like you might find while driving the streets in your city?
Will we become so dependent on computers and our online activities that anything that we might want to accomplish in the real physical world become totally out of reach?
If you believe my last question could never be possible then consider my next question.
Take something simple like how we heat our homes. 100 years ago (which is really not that long ago) most of mankind would have heated their homes with wood.
Wood burnt in a woodstove which is a renewable energy source like some others we have today.
Now ask yourself how many people heat with wood ? So what do you use- Electric, Solar, Wood Pellet, Gas Furnace ?
Where am I headed with this ? Here >>> what would happen if someone flips a switch and turns your electricity off ? Will your heater continue to operate- how many days can you stay warm? 100 years ago using wood heat and the loss of electricity would have little effect on our ability to keep warm.
Our modern society is much like the situation with renewable simple energy, where we have given so much control to computers and devices that live and breathe on power sources that are out of our control and could easily be lost.
Not to mention how we are now turning our private lives over to strangers who only want to plug our personal data into some big media machine of telemarketers and government agencies.
We are investing so much into what we view as a future full of technology that will improve our lives, that we don't see how we are giving up so many things that we took for granted.
So "IS BIG BROTHER WATCHING YOU?"
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