Bloggers are our protection against over-zealous corporations January 16, 2006
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Internet , trackbackThe minutiae of my life are online. There’s nothing very interesting, and I’m an ordinary person known only to friends, neighbours and colleagues. It’s very unlikely there is some detail about me which would be of the slightest interest to tabloids, police or even, I hope, the Inland Revenue. However, if the threads could be tied together, a very complete picture of my personal and business life could be assembled from data willingly given and, I think, gathered with no more nefarious intent than selling me something else.
To some extent, I don’t mind that, although I’ve almost never bought anything based on a ‘targetted marketing’ effort. I can see that part of the reason these corporations are able to deliver their marvellous products comes from knowing more about their clients and, so long as I agree to it, they keep it safe and its not a condition of my using the product, I’m normally quite happy to play the game.
There is a danger though, and it comes from the arrogance of corporations who believe that they somehow have a right to information about what I buy or, as in the case of Apple’s new version of iTunes, what I listen to. In this case, it does sound pretty innocent, but as someone far more eloquent than I once said ‘the price of freedom is eternal vigilence’, and it seems that today most of that vigilence is coming from bloggers. These ordinary citizens, who are often very technically savvy, broke the far more serious Sony DRM scandal, and are a vital element of the creative tension which keeps the corporations honest but able to keep doing what they do well.
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