Privacy for Sale

Martin Geddes in a posting full of good old fashion whinging mentions an idea I found fascinating.

For an example of what presence in 2015 might look like, I’m sure there’s a ton of money in enabling people to feel the “presence” of a celebrity. How much would some people pay to see a real-time feed of Britney’s wristwatch heart-rate monitor? You don’t think this would happen? Just wait! You’ll pay to see a fuzzed-up image and scrambled sound of your idol’s kitchen, just to know they’re there and reachable. Privacy is a fungible commodity for sale.

It reminded me of the told me by the industrial designer about how trivial it was to recruit volunteers who’d allow them to place video cameras in their bathrooms in support of a study on how people shower. What with a half dozen IM systems, and RSS/Atom feeds from delicious, flickr, pubsub, and possibly a blog or two my celebrity monitoring I got past the fuzzed-up image of the kitchen a while ago.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *