After a very personal and rather emotive email conversation from my gmail account produced Google Adverts saying 'Considering suicide?' and 'Thinking of ending it all?', I've been very suspicious of Gmail. Then I realised it was storing all of the addresses I ever wrote to. Then I thought, if Gmail 'knows' who is writing to who, how many degrees of separation am I from a terrorist, or a child pornographer, or something else? Will I be under suspicion of a bombing in the future because I know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows a convicted bomber? Does Gmail know I want to commit suicide, even though I'm pretty sure I'm happy in this world? Are my email conversations as private as I think? Can anything I ever say be taken to be going only to the person I send it to? Is there any security in any kind of conversation except spoken word? Could I be recorded and broadcast if I was just chatting to someone? Whose business is it what I say to anyone? Is there any escape from The Man? Is my life really my own?! Am I even who I think I am?! Who am I?! Where am I?! What do I do?!
But it's probably nothing.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
GMail and any other mail client does know exactly what you say and to whom. E-mail is not secure unless encrypted and even then it's not 100%. Hiding things from bad people is hard enough, but 'The Man' always knows. The information is there it's just a case of whether 'The Man' chooses to collect, store or gather it. The best we can do is hope 'The Man' and the 'bad people' are not one in the same. Be afraid, be very afraid.
On a lighter side, all this information could be used to prove once and for all the validity of the statement (by whoever made it) that we are but a seperation to anyone on the planet of no more more than 7 people. It'd make an interesting experiment.
Hey, that means I know someone that knows someone that knows someone that knows someone that knows someone that knows someone that knows Dave Grohl. How cool am I :-)
What, on a scale of one to ten, having chosen Dave Grohl as the epitome of cool? Probably about a 6.5.
They did find out something about a guy from an isolated tribe in Nepal, who knew someone who once took a plane somewhere, and they linked him to someone he sat next to, and then through about 8 more steps to the Queen, or something. I think 9 or 10 is about the highest 'minimum steps' between two people so far, for people who have bothered to count. Altogether 'It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all!'
Obviously I'm the actual epitome of cool, but I already know me with a seperation of zero.
Post a Comment