Of all the inane things that I can do in the digital world, creating unnecessary accounts and maintaining them takes the cake. We have all known from our school science days that the Universe is infinite and it keeps expanding.. now how you expand infinite is beyond me (My science sucks big time), but the coming back on track the same analogy now applies to the digital world. Space in the digital world is infinite.
Take a look at the evolution of emails. In the heydays before Google and GMail spoiled us for all comers, people in India would remember Rediffmail, it was a mad scramble to open accounts in Rediffmail, getting a email storage of 10MB was a glory in itself. People survived in that 10MB for their jobs, personal connections and what not. A outgoing email could not exceed 2MB. Glory days indeed.
Today, my gmail inbox is more than 70% filled. But my inbox size is close to 7GB that means google is giving me 10GB inbox space and counting based on how fast I can fill up my Inbox. So what happens to all this data already there in my Inbox, I don't even know what data or emails I have in there, the simple fact is this data is being used to predict my behavior on the Internet, it is being used to study how I spend time and based on this I am being showed ads tailor made for me.
This would be a good thing many will say, but technology is now enchroaching our lives like anything. We spend so much of our life connected and generating data to put out on the Internet that the concept of privacy has become moot. Now we may be sitting in the confines of our houses or apartments or offices surrounded by 4 real brick or wooden walls, but essentially out there in the virtual world we are wide open, with no security and nobody bothered about our privacy; governments like us putting more data online, so that they can manage us better, companies like to do the same so that they can sell to us better; but what about me? I don't want to be snooped on or being targetted for everything under the sun starting from face creams to expensive bracelets, I just want to be on my own which is becoming increasingly difficult.
It is the sign of our turbulent times when Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg who made billions out of selling our data to ad companies on FB is revered over Julian Assange creator of Wikileaks who showed us how unsafe we are. One got mythical GOD status over publicizing information and other got demonized for trying to protect the public organized snooping....
What's wrong with the world??? Beats me for sure....
Take a look at the evolution of emails. In the heydays before Google and GMail spoiled us for all comers, people in India would remember Rediffmail, it was a mad scramble to open accounts in Rediffmail, getting a email storage of 10MB was a glory in itself. People survived in that 10MB for their jobs, personal connections and what not. A outgoing email could not exceed 2MB. Glory days indeed.
Today, my gmail inbox is more than 70% filled. But my inbox size is close to 7GB that means google is giving me 10GB inbox space and counting based on how fast I can fill up my Inbox. So what happens to all this data already there in my Inbox, I don't even know what data or emails I have in there, the simple fact is this data is being used to predict my behavior on the Internet, it is being used to study how I spend time and based on this I am being showed ads tailor made for me.
This would be a good thing many will say, but technology is now enchroaching our lives like anything. We spend so much of our life connected and generating data to put out on the Internet that the concept of privacy has become moot. Now we may be sitting in the confines of our houses or apartments or offices surrounded by 4 real brick or wooden walls, but essentially out there in the virtual world we are wide open, with no security and nobody bothered about our privacy; governments like us putting more data online, so that they can manage us better, companies like to do the same so that they can sell to us better; but what about me? I don't want to be snooped on or being targetted for everything under the sun starting from face creams to expensive bracelets, I just want to be on my own which is becoming increasingly difficult.
It is the sign of our turbulent times when Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg who made billions out of selling our data to ad companies on FB is revered over Julian Assange creator of Wikileaks who showed us how unsafe we are. One got mythical GOD status over publicizing information and other got demonized for trying to protect the public organized snooping....
What's wrong with the world??? Beats me for sure....
Very true..indeed agreed to your thoughts..
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