I was reading through my blog reader this morning and ran across Nicolas Carr’s somewhat snarky comment of an interview done by Google CEO Eric Schmidt (http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2010/08/brave_new_googl.php). It made me laugh, but I wanted to actually read the interview since the Google folks lately have been making some very oddly un-Googlish statements regarding privacy or, their insistence that privacy is an outdated idea and that we should just get use to living in a world where “ambivalentâ€? (Google, etc.) corporate organizations have full personal and behavioral profiles on the “connectedâ€? population. I have to admit, my favor quote from the article in the Wall Street Journal has to be:
Let’s say you’re walking down the street. Because of the info Google has collected about you, "we know roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, roughly who your friends are." Google also knows, to within a foot, where you are. Mr. Schmidt leaves it to a listener to imagine the possibilities: If you need milk and there’s a place nearby to get milk, Google will remind you to get milk. It will tell you a store ahead has a collection of horse-racing posters, that a 19th-century murder you’ve been reading about took place on the next block.
How so, Minority Report.
–TR