The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
You know that your geek life is getting to be a chore when it takes too much effort to surf any more. I use my computer and the Internet for almost anything and everything that I do. Need to make a phone call? Use Skype. Need to bank? Head online. Curious about a question? Stick it into Google. Need a map to a place? Google maps. But one thing that I donÕt really do anymore is surf. I have a few dozen sites that I return to and check into almost each day. But beyond these sites, IÕve actually been having trouble finding anything new. But not anymore. Now IÕve discovered Stumbleupon. It doesnÕt sound good to tell people that you spent some time the night before stumbling around the Internet, but that is exactly what it is. Stumbleupon is a small program that installs right into your web browser. You set up a free account and let it know the kinds of things you are interested in. There are dozens of things you can choose from on their lists. Everything from biotechnology and astronomy through to goth dating sites, rave culture and celebrities. Once youÕve got this done, all you need to do is press the little Stumbleupon button installed on your browser and you can spend hours surfing through random sites that have been found and bookmarked by others. In the past week, IÕve been entertained a few evenings just running into random sites that I never would have found by myself. Another site I use that is like Stumbleupon is called last.fm. This is streaming Internet radio. Again, a free download, you install the software and tell it the kind of music that you like. Then you choose a station from the literally hundreds and start listening. The more that you tell last.fm, the more it learns about your musical tastes. For example, I grew up in the Ô80s and I still like to listen to a lot of the music from that time. But there are some bands that I just donÕt like. I set up last.fm to allow me to listen to Ô80Õs music, but even then, I still rate every song that gets played, telling last.fm that I like it, to skip it, or that I donÕt want to hear this song ever again. As time goes on, this service learns more and more about what you like and donÕt like. It is able to select music that you might like. This is based on data from thousands of different users. If a lot of people like Bon Jovi and also like another band, the odds are that you might like it as well. The more data you give services like this, the more they can learn about you. There actually has been some concern about things like this. People are wondering if we are less receptive to new music because we always have the music we like with us. When it comes to traditional radio, we canÕt fast forward them or skip to the next song. In the past we just had to put up with it. Now, we are so used to having the exact music we want that we wonÕt take a chance on something new. People also worry about this when it comes to our privacy. The fact is that if you want to use services like this, you need to be prepared to give up some of your privacy and give the service your information. If you arenÕt willing to teach it anything, it will never be any use to you. But what is the option? Is it possible in our society to even opt out and try to retain our privacy online? Google keeps your entire search history. You can actually search your own history. Facebook collects everything about you. Twitter saves all of your posts. Your Internet service provider quite possibly knows as much about you as your spouse does. Up until this time, all of those records have been secret and even the courts have not been able to access them in Canada, but the fact is that there is a lot of personal information about us that is stored online. Where will this all end up? What happens when a company learns how to bring together your data from all of the different sites you have accounts at? This will be a gold mine for marketers who are aiming at you. Imagine what they would know. For some people this is a nightmare. Other donÕt think it will be that bad because then if companies are aiming messages at you, wanting you to buy their products, at least it will be things that you are interested in. However it turns out, one thing is clear: the future of privacy might be quite different. ([email protected]) Tech Notes runs Mondays.
