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Exit the Machine
Cameron Reilly, voice of "G'Day World," on Australia's Podcast Network, listened to "The Chorus" -- the scenario I had constructed for the Futurist's Sandbox panel at SXSW -- and was thoroughly disturbed by the story it told. Disturbed enough, it turns out, to ping me and ask to do an interview for his podcast on where we seem to be going with social media technologies, and just what it might mean to opt out.
GDay World #320 
Approximately 50 minutes, ~100MB.
Oh, and anyone who wants to see how long I've been mulling some of these ideas should check out Howard Rheingold's archive of Electric Minds, his 1996 website bringing together a variety of writers to talk about cutting-edge subjects. I wrote the "Future Surf" column (all six entries), and it's somewhat amusing to look back and see early iterations of my obsessions.
Comments
Cool image.
Posted by: Michael Anissimov | March 21, 2008 5:34 PM
I found this scenario somewhat confusing. "The Chorus" (whomever or whatever it is) says "it" won't be holding reputation information on you, while people that a "dropout" regularly associates with can make "subjective tags" available.
So what's the difference between The Chorus and people?
I don't see any reason that distributed, portable, and open reputation systems couldn't be created and deployed. The pieces are already appearing in the form of http://openid.net/ , http://oauth.net/ , and systems like the ones used in Credence.
I also felt that Cameron really hadn't taken the time to actually understand why people don't want to be on Facebook.
For example, my problem with Facebook isn't so much privacy as data portability. Not so much that people shouldn't be able to get to some of my info, but that people (including me!) can't get to it enough, in case we want to syndicate, move, archive, or republish my information elsewhere (and that made available to me by others).
Posted by: Nato Welch | March 22, 2008 1:42 PM
Hi Nato. I understand that DP is one of the reasons some people aren't happy with Facebook. I've recently had Chris Saad, the founder of dataportability.org, on one of my podcasts discussing his concerns in detail. The fact is, though, that Facebook is still a useful utility without dp. Sure, it would be better if it had it. But rejecting it entirely because it doesn't is childish. I don't expect people to throw their entire life into it, but at least have a presence.
Posted by: Cameron Reilly | March 23, 2008 2:57 PM