How Will Privacy Look Like in Five Years?
The Financial Times featured an article today entitled: Privacy will end in 2013.
I don’t know the lead researcher, Alex Fuss, neither am I familiar with the organization he represents, but the article does provide some interesting thoughts. Here are some of them:
What will business IT look like in 2013?
Social power will enable businesses to solve problems faster and more effectively using corporate social networks. They will use them to open up questions to a wider audience and tap their collective wisdom. Super-collaborative skills will also become paramount in the workforce.
I don’t know if I share the same opinion. Facebook has certainly taken over as the personal social network on a global scale, but I don’t foresee corporate social networks springing up soon. Social networks = Time wasters. Businesses are too concerned about productivity.
I do, however, believe in a stronger trend towards collaboration and knowledge management. There are simply too many tools to collaborate and share knowledge, so I’m waiting for a killer app that will prove itself to be as successful to collaboration and knowledgement as the iPod was to the portable music player market. I don’t quite think it’s the wiki.
How will individuals use IT in 2013?
New technology will enable us to record all aspects of our lives, providing evidence of work performed, interactions, demonstrations, prototypes, experiments, conversations and so on. That’s happening now: a guy from MIT has been wearing special glasses and recording his life for 20 years.
Technology to record every aspect of our lives will increase — but not without the wrath and fury of privacy activists around the world. For example, the Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia recently released a letter to the Attorney General and Solicitor General regarding CCTV use in Canada. Canadians should be glad that they have authorities fighting for their privacy rights.
What will happen to privacy?
There will be no more lies. You’ll still be able to have secrets but only if you can keep them off the net. Privacy will be available but only to those who can afford to pay for it. For most people, privacy will end in 2013, or a little beyond that.
I partially agree. The Internet will soon host an invaluable amount of information — be careful of what you allow online, because it is not going anywhere.
Read the article for more of Alex’s thoughts.
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