The title of this post is actually inspired by a short story by Kathy Kachelries, published in September 2005 on 365 tomorrows, called The Nine Billion Names of God. And when I read about the new street view service recently concocted by Google, I was instantly reminded of this creepy story about how, in the not too distant future, Google has swallowed up the Internet and basically defined who we are.
Anyway, this article, found via maxdesign’s always useful “some links for light reading” feature, illustrates exactly what I have been trying to get my flat-mate to understand in the last year. That privacy can not be taken for granted, even in one’s own home. That, for example, if you leave your curtains open in the evening with all the lights on full-blast, you can bet that someone out there will not be able to resist taking pictures and, why not?, post them on flickr for all the world to see. Now I admit, this has been a topic of moderate dissent between us but up until this morning, he just did not seem to (or want to) get it. After I showed him the aforementioned article, he just gave me the look, the one that means “shit, she has a point” but that he can not bring himself to say out loud. Euh, whatever.