Daniel alluded to the Google Calendar I maintain, linked in the bottom right of this blog’s sidebar. A while ago, Andy noted that the calendar was not accessible to non-Google registered users, a problem that was my fault – using the wrong link. That link has been updated, and if any of you are curious, you can check out the calendar. It’s more for the people who exist in my physical world, but I put it here because I like the idea of joining the two ‘verses.
Tangentially, my roommate and I are always talking about the pros and cons of doing personal business through Google. He has concerns about the consolidation of information, as do I. I just don’t know where to start and stop with regards to that rebellion.
The Traveller, which I’m almost done with, refers to this phenomenon as The Vast Machine, though it’s obviously a long held idea – a central authority rife with the power of information.
Anybody have any thoughts, either way?
March 13, 2007 at 5:49 pm |
A computer security expert told a few years ago during a very useful computer security course that if you are online, then privacy doesn’t exist. So it doesn’t really matter if you put everything in one basket (i.e, Google) or in multiple baskets (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc),. At the end you will leave online a trail of information that can be tracked down (or hacked into) and consolidated together if someone is really determined in doing so, or really want to track you down.
So once you are fine with this risk, then might as well use the best and most useful online tools for your needs, from Google or other web sites out there, doing a mix and match of whatever works best for you. If online privacy is really a concern then the only solution is that you don’t stay online, or at least really minimize your online activities and only use services and tools you have total control on (via your own server for example for emails, calendar, etc)
March 14, 2007 at 7:45 am |
That seems to make sense to me. This now becomes my root defense of these (my) practices.