In the Parlance of Our Times

I must sound like a broken record at work sometimes. Over the past few months I've had a number of conversations where I've given my views about privacy and the big free web services (Gmail, Flickr, De.licio.us, YouTube, Facebook, etc) that so many of us are drawn to. James, in particular, has been part of so many of these that he must start planning his exit strategy at the first hint that a conversation is heading towards the p-word.

For those who haven't yet had the pleasure of my opinions on this, here are my thoughts in a nutshell (James, feel free to skip ahead):

There is no free lunch. There's a price to be paid for these services, we just don't know what it is yet. At best it could be loss of our data, perhaps because the service starts charging a fee, goes belly-up or just plain burns out. At worst - and this is what I both fear the most and think is the most likely scenario - it will be the sharing of our data with third parties (companies wanting to sell to us, the government, etc) without our knowledge or permission. I'm concerned that so many people, mainly young people, are playing right into the hands of these large companies without so much as a thought as to what they may have to lose.

Last week I was at a meeting with three co-workers, all young men in their late twenties and early thirties. This topic came up and I gave them my views. I got the usual reaction from them. That is, they looked at me with the same polite, amused look you'd give your grandfather as he told of walking three miles to school. In the snow. Barefoot.

But then something surprising happened on Monday. One of these young men stopped by my office to say that over the weekend he'd seen a piece on TV that touched on some of these same issues, and it had got him thinking. Maybe there was something to what I'd been saying. He didn't sound like he planned to stop using these services, but he'll now be using them with his eyes open.

A small victory, to be sure. One that gives me hope, and renewed energy to continue making the effort to get people to think about what they are doing. James, it looks like I'm not going to be giving up this topic of conversation any time soon. You can thank Jason for that, next time you see him.