Anyone wanting to know what he's on about without the exaggerations and technical-speak: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/business/30privacy.html?_r=3&em=&pagewanted=all http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2008/tc20080323_387127.htm Rough appearance from these more sober accounts: it has some dangerous implications for privacy, and its advocates are pretty blase about overriding privacy concerns for supposed general goods, but it does not allow intelligent manipulation at an individual level. It allows discerning of trends, certain amounts of individualised tracking, and that's about it. It does have network/p2p versions as well as centralised versions. It is also highly dependent on the cooperation or unawareness of people in their uses of the particular technologies on which it depends. (It is not much use in low-tech settings or in conflictual settings against determined adversaries). There are thus a range of different scenarios. One being that, due to consumer concerns or judicial pressure, technologies be modified to avoid their use in this way. A second, that their capabilities for individual tracking are technologically limited or prohibited, but they keep being used for measuring mass trends. Still another being that the population be divided between those who make routine use of these technologies and those who either do not use them or strategically limit their use. Fourth, that they move in networked directions, with the data being fed through horizontal applications as well as vertical ones, in effect levelling the playing-field. Fifth, ad hoc counter-measures are developed to recreate privacy when needed, similar to the measures which already exist to get around online monitoring and attempts to identify filesharers. Or sixth, an Orwellian scenario, which would have to be imposed by force (such as implanting everyone with a VeriChip at birth and locking up anyone caught deactivating or scrambling it). Really not all it's cracked up to be I would say from this. _______________________________________________ p2presearch mailing list p2presearch@listcultures.org http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE