Privacy - Enjoy it while it lasts
Tags: privacy, digitalera, writing, thoughts
Published: 2020-10-08 18:05:35

In the fast-growing online world, more and more people are creating an online presence and living their lives publicly. We see more and more bloggers and vloggers appearing on the scene, not to mention people live-streaming their life for the world to see. 

There is a big movement towards letting your “true self” out for the world to see. Our online presence has almost become more important than our real-life presence. Nowadays the better reach we have with our online presence the more opportunities we get introduced to. The more authentic your online presence is the more aligned these opportunities are with your world views, beliefs, and values.

We are seeing it already in the work environment where employers no longer look at the skills of new employees but rather look at personalities and who they truly are as human beings. Placing them according to where they will really fit in being themselves, instead of just another able body that can do a specific job. 

There is much more consideration for who the person is and what state of mind they are in compared to the industrial times where the only consideration was whether you had the skill to do the job.

We are also seeing it in marketing where the focus has completely shifted from getting people to love a product to creating products that people love. Focusing on the customer’s fist and producing what they want instead of persuading as many people as possible to consume a mediocre or useless product.

You see, its a much more efficient system when we truly know each other’s needs. We can then collaborate with likeminded people and get rid of those fake relationships. So efficient in fact that I believe we are quickly moving towards living a transparent life, where privacy is a thing of the past.

No more faking your work history on a cv, in fact, what is a cv? I believe its some old way of saying Linkedin? Might just be me, but if an employer asks for a cv, move on. Seriously, my life story is everywhere online, I have Linkedin, social profiles, my own website with a portfolio of previous projects, and even a blog where I share my inner thoughts, then some people still ask for a cv.

It’s not just our Youtube suggestions and easily finding our favorite movie, I believe that soon all our data that we so freely share online will be combined into one profile of who you are. Then governments, financial institutions, your ex, everyone will have access to who you really are and what you have been up to lately.

I imagine a world where we have an online digital ID that is recognized everywhere and links to everything we do. No need for authentication or payments and no way to lie, steal, and do bad stuff, everything will be tracked by AI and facial recognition. You will be able to walk into any store grab what you need and go, without the need to stop by a cashier. From your perspective there will be no payment at all, it will all be happening automatically in the back end. 

If I had any say in this matter, it should be a globally recognized id, no more passports. You can travel and enter countries based on who you are rather than where you’re from. But as things have been going recently I believe it’s going to take a while for countries to work together and allow this. It is fun to dream about a free world though.

I can carry on forever listing benefits of letting go of the idea of privacy altogether, but the thing is letting go of privacy is scary and almost crazy to even think about. It is a concept that I think we will all need some time to adapt to, and many of us will never want to allow this rather opting to stay in bunkers.

I believe that it is inevitable though and the sooner we can get comfortable with publicly being our authentic selves, the sooner we will reap the benefits of a truly opensource society.