Privacy and Us

We always have one of those ambitious, impossible “Let’s do some business” kind of discussions on friday dinners.

My boss once asked me what every other want-to-be-a-CEO-boss asks his so-called-smart-subordinate: "Pal", he said, "What’s the next big thing?”

"The best has been said!!” is my philosophy; hence, I generally do the intellectual (and not so intellectual) masturbation in private. But since a while, I had been thinking about ‘how are we losing control of our privacy?’. So I thought, may be I should go (intellectually) public today. And I said, "We are one of the last few fortunate generations of human-beings who know what privacy is".

“What do you mean?” he got into a student mode from an entrepreneur mode. I was already into teacher mode. “We would have enough memory and technology to record each and every event that’s happening on this planet very soon, Inside courts nobody would any longer say: ‘My lord, I am innocent but I have no proof of my innocence’; we will always have proof of what has been happening anywhere around the globe”; I elaborated.

“Do you mean we will have enough satellites in the sky to record what’s happening on the roads?” my student asked.
“We already have Google maps with street view, it shows a snapshot taken in past, but soon it could be showing the present, LIVE!” I said.
“That’s ridiculous and unsafe”, he said.
“Well, we cannot help not ridiculing ourselves, can we?” Me.
“Would governments let it happen?” he puts a query.
“Perhaps, only a few authorities would be able to see it, but its going to happen”, I said.

He seemed to be convinced and said “What about stuff happening under the roofs?”
“That’s no big deal,” I said “you can get binoculars that show what’s happening behind the walls”
“What about sound?”
“Sound waves never die and their source can be located”

“So, no more privacy hmm?” he said.
“Privacy, till it need not be public” I said.

“You mean it would be kept private, until it is required for certain reasons, like national security, investigations etc?”
“Exactly! It would not be made public always, but we would have it at the back of our minds that we are being recorded”

“Next step is, recording what’s happening inside a person’s mind”, I got deeper into the subject.

“How do you do that?” he questioned.
“It’s already being done with person’s head wired to a computer, only thing that needs now to be researched is how this can be done remotely” I said.

We were silent for a few seconds. He had probably begun missing his privacy already.

“So, would you like to think of a product idea based on this? I can explore funding meanwhile?” he was back to business.

“Garlic calzones with spinach and parmesan?” I was back to main course.

[I would like to thank, my friend Vinay Belgaumkar for proof reading. I have updated the post as per his feedback. He has helped me before for the hindi posting too.]