Its taken me some time to get up to speed contributing as I’ve been attending a conference in Lisbon, Portugal this whole week. But I’m finally getting a chance to come up for air so here goes it for my first post on this blocks topics.
Over dinner on Tuesday night with my colleagues and an excellent bottle of Portuguese vino we started discussing how very clever technology around us has become. It was prompted by our remarks that Google and any online experience we were all currently having was being geo located for us while in Portugal. I was being shown offers from local Lisbon shops, restaurants and website without even asking for it! For me this is somewhat annoying. Yes, its good to know whats immediately around me but wheres the sense of discovery from being in a new place? To my surprise I found that I was almost entirely alone in thinking that this localized, doctored feed of information and tracking is somewhat concerning. In fact some there were even were rather happy that Google knows exactly where they are all the time, tracks their every move (in the virtual AND physical world), purchase and buying habits and that it can also suggest suitable music for them based on passed playlists. I was told that I was the weird one for not thinking this was wonderful in all manner if ways.
I labelled them all sheep and carried on drinking but it really floored me that most thought this was ‘quite cool’. Are we really becoming that comfortable with tech at this level that we’re not even gona question its motivations?
This s a bit of a weird subject to kick off my first blog but its been topical so far. More relevant ramblings to come…