bjoernvold.com

I don't guess the word "privacy" is still in any language any more...

Too much information, you say? On the Internet, there seems to be no such thing. A wave of Web start-ups aims to help people indulge their urge to divulge — from sites like Blippy, which Mr. Brooks used to broadcast news of what he bought, to Foursquare, a mobile social network that allows people to announce their precise location to the world, to Skimble, an iPhone application that people use to reveal, say, how many push-ups they are doing and how long they spend in yoga class.

Clickety-click the link for more.

I have a dark view, which is really a clear view of what is dark, imo, but what is generally marginalized as my 'dark view', making it something unique to me, enabling denial of reality for those who are not so fond of confronting the truth. Oh my, how arrogant that sounds, but it is what I see.

Comcast, my isp for a couple or few years, had this social networking arm, which split off to a separate corporate entity known as 'Plaxo', if I followed events accurately. This particular manifestation of the underhanded seizing of personal data for the sake of commercial profit crossed my desk when a friend from high school seemed to send me an email, signed by him, pointing to 'this really cool site' or some such. Acting on the familiarity of his name, I clicked through to see what he was talking about. He hadn't sent the message, however. He, I, and other of my friends were misled to clicking through an authorization for Comcast/Plaxo to use my online address book contacts for their own such purposes

The upshot was that Comcast/Plaxo pretended to be their clients in order to quickly grow this business. The consequences of the clicks was not clearly disclosed. I got a birthday reminder for one of my friends and she was alarmed when I told her how I came to know to be able to congratulate her at the right time; she was misled, also. I spent a lot of energy trying to remove this access and set of actions from my account, being repeatedly resisted by uncooperative tech contacts, bounced back and forth between the two entities, Comcast/Plaxo, in the familiar shell game.

@ google, I came to find a variety of references to social networking enterprises using such dishonest tactics, a number of people who did not like being treated that way, and I continue to run across similar pressures to open up my life to corporate. I am not so much concerned about protecting myself from evil forces: there is not so much I have (absent free speech) that would interest evil forces and my energies are better spent pursuing enjoyment of life. I just don't want this kind of crap tying up my time; my energies are better spent pursuing life's pleasures.

My view is that the success of this phenomenon is a consequence of the over-arching phenomenon that evil forces are best served by an ignorant, unaware hive of worker bees, making the evil forces wealthy and powerful. Elevating the superficial minutia of tweets and ebuys to content for an international audience gives the drones something to distract themselves from the dark realities of the crusade of corporate oligarchy, making it increasingly unlikely that anyone might, possibly, start thinking about the concept of changing this state of affairs.

It's an oldie that I often invoke but it's worth considering, again:

Lets fight it wherever we can. We are not unaware worker bees - we are berserks! Informing people is a good start.

VALHALLA!!!!!!!!!!!!

EXACTLYYYY