The new information tools symbolized by the Internet are radically changing the possibility of how we can organize large-scale human efforts.

For most of human history, people have lived in small tribes where everything they did was known by everyone they knew. In some sense we’re becoming a global village. Privacy may turn out to have become an anomaly.

Thomas W. Malone
Director of the M.I.T. Center for Collective Intelligence
November 29, 2008
You’re Leaving a Digital Trail. What About Privacy?
[I am concerned that our shrinking privacy are just one component in an increasingly socialist and tyrannical world and the associated lowered standard of living.

Let me explain.

Capitalism was coincident with the greatest advancement in the human standard of living. I have to wonder if privacy is an essential part of capitalism and what the consequences of no privacy of association will be. If your business competition is friends with “big brother” any business deal you try to work on can be torpedoed. It won’t be the market that decides which company is the most successful. It will be who has the best connections to the watchers. And socialism apologists are all for government watching.

And certainly lack of privacy means a lack of freedom. Your ability to escape an abusive relationship or government will be severely impacted.

See also this QOTD.–Joe]