Editing 1539: Planning
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This data is routinely used to, for example, tailor online ads to the browsing history of the user seeing the ad. They could potentially be used for more evil purposes, like selling the medical history of users to insurance companies. Many users don't feel that they're giving out so much information, and in fact that few of them have given Google or Facebook their medical history. However some leaks have proven quite the opposite. In the [http://www.somethingawful.com/d/weekend-web/aol-search-log.php AOL leak] referenced in [[155: Search History]], searches for "how does a male's cocaine use affect a fetus", "hysterectomy" or "8 alcohol drinks a day", surely would be interesting for a medical insurance company to know. | This data is routinely used to, for example, tailor online ads to the browsing history of the user seeing the ad. They could potentially be used for more evil purposes, like selling the medical history of users to insurance companies. Many users don't feel that they're giving out so much information, and in fact that few of them have given Google or Facebook their medical history. However some leaks have proven quite the opposite. In the [http://www.somethingawful.com/d/weekend-web/aol-search-log.php AOL leak] referenced in [[155: Search History]], searches for "how does a male's cocaine use affect a fetus", "hysterectomy" or "8 alcohol drinks a day", surely would be interesting for a medical insurance company to know. | ||
| β | In the comic, [[Ponytail]] is puzzled because people are not worried about Google or Facebook using their information in evil ways; however [[Megan]] raises a quite fair point, namely that the huge amount of {{w|nuclear weapons}} in existence is much scarier, and that was worrying to the general public in the 1980s, however people have grown tired of that and now concerns have moved to internet privacy only because it's "new". What is perceived as dangerous or worrying follows trends and fashions not directly related to real danger (i.e. "happen on auto-pilot"). The point Megan is making is that maybe it's better to just accept that things work in this way and go with the flow. This is very similar to what happens in [[1480: Super Bowl]] or [[1534: Beer]]. | + | In the comic, [[Ponytail]] is puzzled because people are not worried about Google or Facebook using their information in evil ways; however [[Megan]] raises a quite fair point, namely that the huge amount of {{w|nuclear weapons}} in existence is much more scarier, and that was worrying to the general public in the 1980s, however people have grown tired of that and now concerns have moved to internet privacy only because it's "new". What is perceived as dangerous or worrying follows trends and fashions not directly related to real danger (i.e. "happen on auto-pilot"). The point Megan is making is that maybe it's better to just accept that things work in this way and go with the flow. This is very similar to what happens in [[1480: Super Bowl]] or [[1534: Beer]]. |
The title text hypothesizes a similar conversation being held ten years later (presumably in 2025, ten years after the comic was published), in which the two aspects of the above have been inexplicably mixed. A future equivalent to Ponytail asks why we all think it is OK to hand over the control of our nuclear weapons to Google and Facebook, which would certainly be a nonsensical (and deeply troubling) route to take. This could also be seen as another step toward the {{w|Technological_singularity|singularity}}, from which perspective handing over control of nuclear weapons could be desirable, catastrophic, implicit and/or unavoidable. | The title text hypothesizes a similar conversation being held ten years later (presumably in 2025, ten years after the comic was published), in which the two aspects of the above have been inexplicably mixed. A future equivalent to Ponytail asks why we all think it is OK to hand over the control of our nuclear weapons to Google and Facebook, which would certainly be a nonsensical (and deeply troubling) route to take. This could also be seen as another step toward the {{w|Technological_singularity|singularity}}, from which perspective handing over control of nuclear weapons could be desirable, catastrophic, implicit and/or unavoidable. | ||
