A thought has been percolating in my brain for the past couple of months; I'm sure I'm not the first to consider it. It regards, in the specific case, pervasive computing and privacy.
Almost everybody supports, or is looking forward to, pervasive computing. I'm talking about the ideal that at sometime in the near future, you'll be able to walk into a room and your PDA will silently query the peripherals and make them available to you; your cell phone will ask the land line phone what its telephone number is and will forward your calls to it; your health statistics will be monitored by some remote computer that is able to determine when you are in trouble and take appropriate actions to rescue you; in a nutshell, your personal network will travel around with you like a bubble, connecting to the environment through which you move and allowing your mobile tools to provide you with more functionality than they ever could by themselves. Anybody with an active imagination should be able to come up with an extensive list of ways intelligent, intercommunicating devices can be used for our benefit.
The technology which enables this sort of peripheral interaction comes in various flavors. Suns Jini is one that stands a good chance of becoming the standard because of portability issues, but there are many others. Exactly how it will be done isn't as important as the fact that it will be done, and that it has already started. We are becoming Borg.o
Of course, as with nearly anything, that which can be used, can be abused, and this sort of technology is the stuff of nightmares for many of us who fear for our privacy and individuality. Ironically, it is those of us who most fear the technology who most want the technology. We're the early adopters, and we fear it, because we understand it. We are in the throes of a grand internal conflict where we both want the services of pervasive computing, while at the same time vehemently not wanting our computers to know where we are at all times. We have the same issues with cookies, which are very convenient, when used properly, and invasive when not. Cookies can be considered to be a virtual form of pervasive computing.
The government, of course, very much wants us to have these services. These smart devices will make our lives easier, make our jobs easier, make us happier, wealthier, will drive new growth in the economy... and it will allow them to track us more easily. Sure, they won't get everyone, but, eventually, they'll get most of us in a database, and they'll know what we're doing, when we're doing it. If you think you leave a trail now by using your credit card, you ain't seen nothing yet.
So there it stands. Everybody wants the same same thing. It occurs to me, however, that there is one fundamental difference between what they want, and what we want. Both government and citizens want pervasive computing; the difference is that citizens want to be able to turn it off.
This is the sort of technology which we both dread and anticipate. Self-driven cars, (more) intelligent houses, home security, smarter traffic signals... all of the spin-off products from something like this would be great to have around.
On the other hand, this could also be the basis for technology that tracks where you go and what you do. Under the auspices of controlling crime, criminals could be "flagged" and watched, traffic policing could be automated, etc. Where it gets scary is in who determines what suspicious behavior is, or who qualifies as needing to be watched, or removing the human element from the decision making process of evaluating a crime.
We're on the verge of this right now. Facial recognition and comparison to databases of known criminals is happening in airports and sports coliseums across the country. The FBI's Carnivore project, now renamed to something less threatening, is still progress. The current administration is trying desperately to get some sort of national ID database started. Microsoft wants to be the company that other companies pay to get your personal information. Oracle wants to be the database for the national ID. The issues are being discussed, and the technologies are being implemented. Pay attention and make your voice heard on these issues now, or in the end, you may not be able to find the "off" switch.