Remember back in the early nineties when the internet was going to be this great tool that could connect people and cultures, a great tool of communication and collaboration?  I’m sure that was the premise behind other technologies, like radio and television, as well.  But, sure as day, those ideals give way to commerce and much of the technology becomes a tool to sell stuff.  Think about radio and television; one could argue that today they mostly exist to sell advertising, not some “greater cause.”

Naturally, the internet went the same way.

But, all of the social networking sites that are popping up seem to make the web more like what the promise of the internet has been all along.  The reality is, however, that all of these sites are going to need real business models to survive, because they’re not cheap to run or maintain.  Even scarier is the fact that a lot of folks would love to get there hands on all that data and use it for purposes not originally intended.  Mix that with companies desperately needing cash and we may have a pending privacy nightmare.

Now throw in the government, who also sees a gold mine of data just hanging out there, and social networking starts to look like something out of The Minority Report…

New Scientist has discovered that Pentagon’s National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks.

I’m generally not the paranoid type, but this article is pretty eye opening:
New Scientist Technology - Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites


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