Takeaway: Internet users unknowingly contribute to this global cyber information awareness for altruistic and self-serving reasons. But what is the alternate to not giving up privacy to enjoy the benefits of the Internet's vast resources?
The thought of this idea came when I
was about to start my bath. The thought began with giving up certain
privacy rights in order to improve efficiency among government
services (e.g., National ID System, Unified Multi-Purpose ID System,
etc.). The thought, however, kinda got so far as the simple idea of
giving up rights to one entity became larger – that is, something
like a Skynet (Remember Terminator?).
Cyber information awareness is just my
own term – I think. This is not cyber surveillance as being done by
one entity, like what the US does with CIA, NSA, FBI, and other
electronic surveillance-capable agencies. I think of the idea of the
Internet genuinely creating an intelligence - no, intellect - of its own, something
similar to the idea in Skynet and I, Robot.
It is not just a collection of data, as
Google would already have this with their search algorithm, search
database, expert systems and other search-related, data-centric
systems (although Google would be the best candidate to unknowingly realize cyber information awareness). Cyber information awareness is
the Internet’s own conceptualization and realization of itself, as
created by us – the people, its users – in contributing to its
intellect (not simply intelligence).
We volunteer everything to the Internet
for two totally distinct reasons: An altruistic motivation, which
says that we humans want to help each other, such as contributing to
Wikipedia, or Google Maps, or Open Maps, or creating a public album
with geolocation embedded so that other people will know how to get
there or what they can see in a location (yeah, I do all of those). The opposite is a
market-driven motivation. We give up our rights because that is our
payment for the system. Examples are the Google Now, Ingress, Google
Local, Facebook, and other location-sensitive mobile applications. In
order for us to get the benefits of their service, we have to give up
certain rights, like privacy. Yes, Google says they protect us by
collecting only non-personal, anonymized information, but.. then...
have you read this?
Cyber information awareness could have
started (if the idea would eventually happen) from Wikipedia. Yes.
Wikipedia started the idea of sharing our knowing
of things. Not just the encyclopedia-based information, but how
we understand things. The only thing that minimizes the
person-based nature of the Wikipedia is the editing portion. Editing is
good, but in terms of cyber information awareness, editing (by other
people) removes certain elements of the know-how (read: understanding) of the people and
its users.
Blogs,
journals, micro-blogs and photo-blogs are very personal, and so they
contribute so much to this cyber information awareness. And of
course, you have Google Keep and Google Now, two very personal,
real-time applications on what we think, what we appreciate, what is
important to us, now.
Google’s
continuing improvement of its search technology – first is from our
search behavior, (knowing if we create a mistake, and then predicting
what really we might have meant), then enhancing the Android operating
system which added the capability to embed location to our searches
and behavior based on what we are doing with our mobile phone (and know that, too) –
enhanced this.
To add even more
personal and consent-based (read: voluntary?) know-how is Google+.
Facebook tries to
do this, but because they started as an ad-centric social networking
service, they are not as comprehensive on this as Google is.
Add to this Google
Glass.
Of course, I am not pointing a finger
at Google. I love their services (I am using Blogger, right?). It
just shows one entity can influence towards this cyber information
awareness.
Consider Apple’s plan of an iWatch
(is it?).
And what about the numerous cloud
services, such as Dropbox, Minus, iCloud, among others. These files
are not simply data. These are files which are important to us.
It is not just the files which we keep but also what we consider as important that they (cloud service providers) know.
And
how about mobile (carry-on) health devices which we connect to the
internet? Remember Google Health? So you have one entity that knows
your contact info, your contacts (if you use Android phone and
email), your work, your common places and your track, your attitudes
at any particular moment of your life, knows what games you like, and
knows your health condition (Trivia: Did you know that during World
War II, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s health was the target
of German spies? They even tried - in vain - to smuggle urine
samples to ascertain his health condition and use his weakness to the
Germans’ advantage. FDR’s Deadly Secret,
2009.)
The more we share
our experience (not just opinions, but even links, which show what we
are reading, what interests us, what we like and don’t like), the
more we contribute to this global cyber information awareness – the
Internet’s awareness of us, its users. And when there is no such
thing really as anonymous data, then it is just a matter of time when
one of the global entities of information and knowledge will simply
take away our information – which we volunteered for one of the two
reasons – and make us pay to keep the benefits we have come to
appreciate and depend on.
As we gear towards this knowledge-based market, industry or world, the battle between who owns what we know (yeah, even the legal agencies, such as the court and congresses think about it), we have to be responsible for these about what we put online.
So, what is the
alternative?
