Augmented Reality and Privacy 144
An anonymous reader recommends a piece up at Augmented Planet that makes a couple of points about privacy in the realm of geotagging and augmented reality that haven't been discussed much. First, once you geotag and upload, say, a photo to the Net you can lose ownership over the data and especially its metadata. Second, data on the Net is long-lived and might be put together in ways you wouldn't like, long after it was created. "If you geotag a picture with your new 50" plasma TV in the background and upload it to the Web, congratulations you have just told everyone where you live and what you have of value. The web has a long memory — geotag something today and in six months it is still on the Web. When you tweet from the beach in Barbados telling your friends you are away for 2 weeks, that picture of your 50" plasma will still be out there along with its location. It's easy to track down someone's home address if you have their real name." The submitter adds, "I never really cared about my online privacy too much. This article made me think seriously about privacy for the first time. No mean feat."
Re:but it's cool and hip (Score:5, Interesting)
This obsession with self-visibility is a byproduct of "celebrity culture", which itself is a byproduct of XX-century broadcasting. Once current paradigms of information consumption give way to something different and more bidirectional, people will stop obsessing about exposing themselves.
You'd be surprised (Score:3, Interesting)
Thieves are not *pirates*, you know.
(more seriously, thieves are quite happy to pay like everyone else when the profit/cost ratio is high enough.)
No, it's called "Cautious." (Score:4, Interesting)
Paranoia's just a state, it's neither bad nor good. Acting on that paranoia to hurt ones self or others, that's bad. I see nothing harmful about not uploading these bits of information and therefore, paranoia or not, it's not a bad idea.
Now, I may not agree it's common sense as the GP does, but I don't think it's paranoia either.
Re:but it's cool and hip (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree to a certain extend, but it's beneficial in another perspective completely detached from the negative undertone: I love it when there are a few people reviewing their restaurants, adding their fav places, uploading pictures of certain events so I can walk around with my augmented reality enabled browser and seredipityly discover things I otherwise would've been oblivious to. (once I got my Android-phone I went out RAR-driving ("Random Augmented Reality Driving" and had the greatest time stepping out of my personal frame of reference exploring others, like finding random clubs, bars and whatever would turn up having one point the phone to aim for the next discovery.)
Further more, the meticiously blogging (pictures, video, text, ...) creates a large socialogical and psychological significant record: say I geotag and datestamp my pictures and video's, in a matter of years I'll be able to track back some events of my life. In a global view, it creates potential for "backward timetravel". Say "play random video x of year xxxx at location y", all fed by "the selfish need for fame", or "selfexpression" or what have you.
By the sheer overload of data and lack of ability to represent and order the data it's become such a messy blob usually only people who "actually care about you" (or you spam in your friendses-list with your egocentric self-portrayal and expressionism) will be exposed to it and will decide in what level it's relevant or interesting to them.
For me it's a one point to many, where I don't have to individually need to maintain people, but they can, if interested, get certain information about me and my life but it's mostly limited to people I know or trust to a certain extend to be allowed into my "comfort zone".
In short; I don't care if someone feels the need to feel the need to show every or any aspect of their lives online, or the people who find it interesting enough to watch this or even motivate further such behaviour. I do like the data it generates and the information and knowledge we can generate from that (no I'm not thinking about amateur porn but statistical and historical data).