More Musings on "Feed"

The society described in "Feed" makes me sad. I can totally live my life without using IM, but I can see the crippling disadvantages of being the only one at my company that couldn't mentally IM -- talk about being out of the loop! There are a lot of things that bother me about "Feed" society. The disadvantages of not having the feed and the idea that "resistance is futile" and those who fight against it further disadvantage themselves are particularly upsetting. But most distressing to me is the complete loss of privacy. I hate the idea of everyone knowing where I am (and potentially what I'm doing) at any given time. Quite frankly, I can't imagine anything worse than knowing my dad had a (ahem) physical response to a female colleague (unless it's the filet farm). There is definitely such a thing as too much information. The widespread cultural acceptance of the loss of privacy is profoundly disturbing to me. I don't want that to be my future.

I think we are closer than we might like to admit to the society described in "Feed." Of course, as I discussed in my last post, targeted advertising is nothing new, but what is new is the amount of information we share about ourselves in the digiverse. Most of the sites I have registered for this semester know my name, my gender and my date of birth, and sometimes my geographic location. Depending on how many personal details I give after I've registered, the site may know my astrological sign, my favorite color, and what type of music I prefer. Using information pushing methods, like RSS, of which I may not be aware, the site and its networked colleagues can send me information about things that I already like. This cuts down on the amount of time I need to spend looking for information about things I like, and it is highly possible that I will come to rely on this type of feed. I don't believe that people will willingly take the next step to have technology implanted in their brains. Unless we're already living in the matrix, I'm pretty sure everyone knows that cybernetic technology is dangerous and that computers and their programs will seize any opportunity to try to take over the world. Of course, I could be wrong...