In my neck of the woods, it's rare to find someone that's not sniffling from allergies once spring is in the air. A mobile pollen alert a la Vodaphone is just what we need around here. Possibilities for other forms of sensors and alerts obviously abound.
To use a service like that there is a privacy trade-off though. From knowing "Where I am" which already makes us a little nervous phone companies would be a closer to knowing "Who I am". My allergy profile would be on their database.
It may be argued that our privacy is already severely if not irreparably compromised with Google's thirty five year cookie. It is now generally agreed that "You are what you search" and there was no covenant made not to act on such intelligence.
Google sits atop a platinum mine of data that sales and marketing types would sell their souls to get a hold of. What's to say that souls are not being Dutch auctioned as we speak ?
At least with a mobile pollen alert we'll be sneezing less and enjoying the season more.
An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
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as for privacy, what the heck...they have my SSN for the credit check before they give me a cellphone...they know where my phone is all the time...what's the big deal with knowing my allergy profile...:-)))
and hey, [think i blogged on this sometime] when the privacy freaks are told "you've saved 10$ with safeway" today, they've effectively handed over every shopping habit to safeway in a nice little plastic card. sheesh! I for one, would gladly trade trend-capturing data for anything thats relevant. for all the spooks privacy freaks spread, gmail prolly is the best junk-free mail i've got.
The most they can do is encourage out impulse buys with teaser campaings. That is probably the state of the art at this time
Google has been path-breaking. They may well never turn evil as is their vision and use the power they have only for the edification of mankind but who can tell about temptation ?
lol peppy...yeah i haven't gotten any penis or breast enlargement mails in my gmail...yet...*touchwood*...:-))