The digitized future. As a term it's rather innocuous, but as a concept it carries some strong negative connotations in our current culture. In the film Minority Report, there's a scene (embedded above) where Tom Cruise walks into a Gap and is 'recognized' by the billboard, which then goes on to greet him and recommend some products based on his past shopping history. I'm taking the scene a bit out of context, but it's impossible to escape the fact that in that scene and throughout the movie, the integration of technology with normal life is more frightening than awe-inspiring.
Even though the seamless digitization of our lives sound great on paper, the reality it's something that scares lots of people. Integrating technology into our lives may make things more convenient, but it comes at a cost of privacy, which is a cost most people are unwilling to pay. From the controversy over targeted internet ads to the abject failure of Google Buzz, it's clear that the perception of privacy hasn't evolved as fast as technology has in the past decade.
To offer fast and efficient services, companies need to know information about you. But the Catch-22 is that most individuals don't want to give companies that information. Facebook has somewhat managed to break that endless cycle by promising users control of their information, but on the flip side they haven't really been able to provide cutting-edge services. Apple and Google have been storing information about their users for awhile now, but they've similarly been stonewalled by our perception of privacy.
So all this considered, what does the digital future hold then?
Microsoft and Google envision a digital future in the clouds; cloud computing. Everything you do will be tied into the cloud computing network, and the standardization of such a network makes it easier to have one log-in 'identity' across multiple services, reducing the need to constantly ask for approval to use private information. Having privacy settings centralized within one log-in identity doesn't magically solve people's sensitivities towards their information being used, but it does make it easier to make services based on the digital data we accumulate.
Pursuing a concept similar to cloud computing, Apple is pursuing a digital future designed around the harmonious networking devices you use every day. The subtle difference lies in the difference of philosophy; the goal is to provide smaller and much more focused services like video chat and media delivery. This negates the problems with privacy, since users will pick services based on individual apps rather than from a larger centralized services, essentially letting users consent through the action of downloading individual apps and installing them. It's much easier to impose many smaller costs to privacy than one larger one right away, and in the end the control lies with the user.
The costs that the digitized future imposes on privacy isn't something that can't be overcome, it's just that any such future needs to allow people to be in control of their information, regardless of what it is. And perhaps the best way to provide those benefits is for technology to work slowly into people's lives, by letting the users themselves take part voluntarily in revealing information for the good of the community in a peer-driven system, much like Google's 'Open Space' parking app for Android cellphones.
Indeed, as long as the digital future preserves our desire to remain anonymous (or perhaps our desire not to), and always presents options to those who don't wish to partake, the sky is the limit. Privacy isn't a absolute legal right, it's a fluid social concept. Simply relying on cultural changes to force the perception of privacy to change isn't the method of choice; only through carefully exploring the boundaries can those borders be pushed out. The stark dystopian future envisioned by Minority Report and other pop-culture films need not be prophesy. The relationship between society and technology goes both ways, and both can evolve with the other.
'Open Space' app image courtesy Engadget
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