Right now, the state of privacy on the Internet is “we collect every bit of data about you, crosslink everything and use it to manipulate your attention”. The internet of Things brings the promise (threat?) that “every bit” comes to mean not just everything you did online, but also everything you did in your home, workplace, car and bedroom.
The future is shaped by those who have the strongest vision of what it should be. Right now that’s Big Data, which culturally rhymes with “Big Oil”, “Big Tobacco” and “Big Pharma”. If we don’t want the grim meathook future they are cooking up for us, we need to visualise what we DO want and fight harder to make it happen.
So what does a privacy-perserving future look like? How can we construct an internet where the value of information accrues to individuals, not to billionaires?
Many of the pieces are already in place.
Join us as we fit these pieces together and imagine what Internet life (aka “life”) might look like when we wrest power back from Big Data.