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in the film ghostbusters II, baby oscar was, according to IMDB, played by twins, william t. “will” deutschendorf and henry j. “hank” deutschendorf II.  a quick facebook search reveals that will deutschendorf and hank deutschendorf are both on facebook.  even better, another quick search indicates that they’re both jiu jitsu instructors in san diego!  thanks, internet!

One of fastest-growing technology segments on the Web and in the mobile application space right now is location-aware services. Some have argued that this is one of the most important pieces of “Web 3.0” and others have even gone so far as to argue that using technology to track your real-time location is a form of accountability and should be encouraged. 

Interesting idea, but I have to say that I’m 100% against it. Sure, it sounds good at first, but then we start expecting to know where people are most of the time. Pretty soon it gets to the point where it’s more normal for people to be sharing their locations than not and then we get to the point where merely “going dark” with your location is cause for suspicion. 

People never seem to remember that technology is like Pandora’s Box and there’s no way you’re ever getting those worms back in that can (and good luck unmixing those metaphors). I already catch enough crap from people for never answering my cell phone (I only answer it when I can actually have a conversation), not responding to IMs (my phone is logged in to Google Talk but there’s no way I’m responding to every GTalk message on my phone… sorry, guys) and so on.

The article linked above even compares the technology to the use of highway toll transponders and cell phone triangulation to track a person’s current location and movement history. Interestingly, he sees this comparison as a positive one, but, while I agree that they are very similar, I am against the use of all of them.  There have been cases taken to court, for example, in Illinois where somebody’s EZ-PASS records were subpoenaed and used to prove the person’s whereabouts at a given time.

This I consider particularly nefarious, as most people don’t realize they’re surrendering their movement data by using an EZ-PASS, plus the toll structure in Illinois has been adjusted in the last few years such that people who regularly pass through tolls are severely penalized if they decide to pay cash rather than joining and using the EZ-PASS system.  Essentially, you now have to pay a premium to enjoy the anonymity of cash.

In much the same way, I don’t think most people realize when they check-in at their local pub on Foursquare that someday that could be used in court to prove where they were or were not at a given time. It’s not enough that everything you say online is now archived forever, pretty soon it could be that everywhere you ever go is also publicly archived forever. Even worse, things that you write/say online at least are something you, hopefully, expressed on purpose— location data is secondary and possibly more could be inferred from it than you ever even intended. What if you check-in somewhere and minutes later a violent protest breaks out— are you suddenly now linked inextricably to that protest for the rest of your digital life?  Will future employers be able to do a check on you and see that you were at some equivalent of, say, the WTO protests? Do you really want strangers to be able to piece together that much of your life just by browsing and collating some data online?