This was a draft post from July 2010. At the time it was prompted by yet another Facebook privacy scare ('Facebook data harvester speaks out') but it's more and more relevant each day. The quote was such a succinct summary of the state of privacy and social media that I had to share it: 'we'll be like Adam and Eve biting the apple, and suddenly realizing that we're naked'.
It's from Perspective: Carnegie Mellon's Jesse Schell on Mobile and the Art of Game Design:
I've been thinking a lot about augmented reality. I've been thinking about how very soon all the scattered data about us on the web will be consolidated in ways that will shock us. Someone will hold their smartphone up as they walk by my car, my house, or my person, and suddenly get information about my life, my interests, and my family. This is going to make us feel like our privacy has been violated, even though no new data is being shared — rather, the old data that is already out there on Facebook and on the web is going to be consolidated in unexpected ways. We'll be like Adam and Eve biting the apple, and suddenly realizing that we're naked.