(no subject)

[watertank]

There's no privacy on the Internet. Google keeps track of your search requests, and links you click on; Live journal monitors what pages you read; YouTube knows what you watch; Amazon knows what you buy; Photobucket watches pictures you take; Expedia follows your travels; etc., etc. The funny thing is they probably know more about you than you know about yourself. They have teams of engineers and marketers analysing your habits in hope to sell you more things you don't need. Not only that. If they don't know how to sell stuff to you directly, they sell your online habits to people who think they can do it better. Your virtual soul has become a valuable commodity - people you've never met trade it while you work, eat, sleep, shit, make love, and drive.
The only way to beat the system is to have multiple lives, multiple simultaneous incarnations. I think that would be a hell of an artificial intelligence application - creator of disposable identities intended to fool soul-hunters. Each peson becomes a Matrix, whith its own masters, slaves, demons and saints, roving the world, colliding and colluding with other Matrices. The death of privacy leads to the death of identity. A new psychology arises: non-existentialism. Humans as traceble beings become extinct. Good riddance.

Comments

[poroshin.livejournal.com]

Two real ways to combat this, I guess. Become a technophobic hermit, or use anonymizing software.

[watertank.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, neither of these options is practical. Some of the services that require ID are quite useful. The question is how to deflect unwanted attention from the not-so-useful ones.