It's becoming increasingly difficult not to be more depressed about online life lately.
Perhaps, i'm dwelling on it a bit, but there have been a lot of very worrying things recently. Things that, quite frankly, make me realize that in twenty years or so, the web is not going to be the same at all. Even worse, is that people won't care.
Consider that just a few days ago, Ron Bowes uploaded a torrent containing personal information for about a fifth of the users of Facebook, or around 171,000,000 people, or the equivalent to about half of the US population. Since it was public information, i know i'm listed, although you won't get that much information about me, other than the few public items i've been forced to disclose and the associations around them. Still, a lot of folks are far more willing to divulge publicly, so it's not terribly difficult to put together quite a good bit of info about someone.
Thing is, people don't care. Heck, with stuff like foursquare and places, you are now eminently trackable. Great for alibis, but don't get creeped out if you suddenly get mail offering great deals on Pinot Noir because you drove some friends around this past weekend. Nice to know who the biggest consumers of that information are the companies you'd expect would be interested.
Then, there's the whole Net Neutrality thing. Remember the big advocate of a free and open net? Turns out they may not be such a big advocate after all. At least not when it comes to mobile networks because obviously the internet you have on your mobile devices should be significantly different than the one you use to look up directions, read email, find information or use for entertainment.
And again, people won't care.
If the entire promise of a free and open web were replaced by a single company tomorrow, i don't think the majority of people using it would care or even notice, so long as they got their 15 points for not turning off their mobile tracking device and avoiding "restricted zones" like competitor services or public libraries. Computers have been around for one full generation, yet i still have to explain to people that it's not only possible to put free software on their computer, but they might find it better than the stuff they pay for.
The fact that they don't care is our fault. The fact that they're not aware of what they've done and are blissfully doing exactly what got us beat up in school means that the same folks that took our lunch money have a bigger audience to draw from. We made things simple, but we never made it obvious. We shrugged and laughed it off when we should have stood up and said something, or at least shown a bit of light where it needed to be shown.
It's quite chic to say that this is the time "when geeks won". We didn't win. We lost. We got flattered, distracted by shiny toys, complacent and let the slick marketing types and bullies take over our sandbox.
And we have only ourselves to blame, really.
