Connecting Data: Good or Bad?

What is going to happen when all of our disparate data starts to come together and make sense? Three different posts made me think about that today as I read them:

REAL TIME, SENSORS, & CLOUT

real time VentureBeat announced that WordPress is stepping into the real time world, via RSSCloud. The gist being that with this new technology applied to blogs and news sources, posts and articles will be able to be indexed and searchable in real time, right along side tweets. I think that real time is an important part of connecting information because we live in a real time world, and latency only ever causes confusion. Are these the “latest latest” numbers, or just the latest numbers?

everyone as a sensor VentureBeat also had a story about Symantec recruiting their users to help thwart cybercrime by enlisting them as sensors that provide as-it-happens malice reporting to authorities. Their calling it crowdsourcing but from what I read, it seems like all a user has to do is opt in.

clout Seth Godin talks about Clout and it’s a topic that I’ve been thinking about since I read the book Linked, by Albert-Laszlo Barabassi, last year. It’s thought provoking to imagine being able to easily identify the individuals spreading your messages.

CONNECTING THE DOTS

I think that what Seth Godin is getting at comes down to real time crowd sourcing. As a participant on-line, I shouldn’t have to do anything extra, besides participate. The web should then be able to get my information and action log, make sense of it in various ways for various people, and collectively enhance the overall experience.

But what about my privacy, you ask?

I don’t know that we’ll still have it in this type of world, at least not the way we perceived to have privacy just a few years ago. It may be a philosophical question, but how many separate facebook and twitter accounts do we need before we can fool ourselves into thinking that anything on-line is private or even segmented in today’s world? As much as we want to keep our work lives and personal lives separate… it’s becoming less and less convenient to do so, leading me to ask the question:

Does privacy really even matter anymore?

Based on the quantity and type of information we’re freely uploading into on-line databases, [cough] social media, I don’t think that it does… If I ask myself, what am I really trading off by entering personal data into a system that can aggregate it, crunch some numbers, and make things faster and more convenient for me? The answer is not much.

If my buying patterns become known to marketers, is it such a bad thing for me to get a special offer for something I actually want? As opposed to the current ads taking a stab in the dark and missing by large margins?

I don’t think that it is.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Is connecting our data on-line a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing? Do any of us really still live in a world where privacy exists? Inquiring minds want to know. Please fill me in via the comments below.