Comments on: Google is stealing our souls

By: DZ

DZ — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 07:59:06 +0000

Hi,
Was life so bad before the personal computer era?
It was Heaven.

In the now non-personal computer era…
I believe Google has the power and ability to hack into the local hard drive of anybody’s computer.
It is exactly like hacking into the deepness of one’s soul.
1984 come-true!!!
(George Orwell)
‘The Horror… the Horror… the Horror…’
(Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad)
The German law Lexdabear wrote about:
‘Datenschutzgesetzâ€™, a law that gives you the right to look at all the data the government has stored about you should indeed apply to Google.
Alas… Paradise is Lost! (epic poem about the Fall of Man, John Milton).
———————————–
By the way, Lexdabear: you forgot the ‘n’ in goverNment… but I forgive you on this matter, you can answer me back
if you like, thank me I hope… it is ok… I am not Google… no offence, I respect you.)

DZ. Bye.

By: Eric VÃ©tillard

Eric VÃ©tillard — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:11:21 +0000

The can of worms is the fun part of all this soul thing. The idea simply is to look at personal data in a novel way.

Instead of looking of what a site knows about us, we consider what this site knows about what other people know of us. Basically, we are adding a level of abstraction.

If you think about it, this is what Google did when they started ranking Web pages by the number of pages linking to them. Their ranking algorithm basically evaluates every page’s “soul”.

This algorithm has value. Is there a similar value in exploiting in a way or another the human soul as defined by Lazar? I am sure there is, but I haven’t found the right can of worms yet.

By: Adriaan

Adriaan — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:54:14 +0000

Hallo, Eric.

You make a strong argument against the “deepness” of the “soul data” stored and made available by social networking sites. However, many social networking sites (e.g. FaceBook) encourage users to install plugin applications which let other users give feedback to them… thus facilitating the awareness a user has of their own “soul data”.

That aside, the definition of “soul” can be extended to apply to pretty much anything which leaves an impression (via sensory channels) with a being which is self-conscious. Which leads to the opening of a new can of worms…

By: Eric VÃ©tillard

You are right about the information about my visitors. I don’t want to know exactly who you are, unless you want to let me know.

I have actually thought about having people sign-in, simply because I would like to know my readers a bit more. But I still believe that a blog is better if it is open.

The problem today is that there is no real way to let others know what we want to share and what we don’t want to share with them.

About transparency, you are right as well; we should extend to private companies the laws that force government disclosure.

Thanks for the comments.

By: lexdabear

lexdabear — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:48:03 +0000

Very nice analogy, Eric :). With Google your soul will probably have an eternal lifetime.
I follow your statement as far as info about people accessing your web-site. From the privacy perspective, me, as a user, would like to look at your site anonymously. I mean you opened it for everyone to read..
And if you would like to know who access your site, you could ask the people to sign in..
Now the question with Google is why it does not make the data it stores transparent. I mean if you can proof you are who you are, you should be allowed to look at all the info Google has about you. In Germany there is a so called ‘Datenschutzgesetz’, a law that gives you the right to look at all the data the goverment has stored about you.