Have any of these people ever checked out a fucking library book?
I swear after the tinfoil hat brigade stopped wailing about Google Earth showing 2 year old pictures of their houses now comes the rest of them wailing about Google Books tracking the reading habits of it’s users so down with EVIL GOOGLE. I hate to break it to you guys but um your local library has been tracking the books you read for years and they are pretty much owned by the government. Oh and those satellites that take the Google Earth pictures same thing… your government.
The fact is your “right to privacy” in most cases is just an assumption you made that was false to begin with and was out the window as far as your government was concerned when you got your social security number and started paying taxes or bought that cell phone and Um when I was a submariner we used to get some laughs listening into your cell phone calls and let me tell you… So yeah, get over yourself.
If you don’t want to read Google Books then don’t. I myself hope they do change the way things are including copyright restrictions on orphaned works and everything else fucked up and outdated about publishing and make yet another thing open to the public and accessible by anyone no matter what they track or advertise to me.
Tags: Google
kirsten saell wrote,
Dude, everyone tracks everything these days. For the longest time my ex refused to get a rewards card for the gorcery store because “They track your spending, you know. When the all those kids grow up obese and sue their parents for feeding them junk all their lives, they’re gonna have all the evidence they need right there in some database.”
Visa tracks your purchases and gives them back to you in itemized columns. If you pay by debit, each transaction number is linked to a detailed receipt that someone somewhere could use to prove you drink too much or buy Manolo Blahniks instead of milk for your kids. Libraries track the books you borrow, gas stations use rewards programs to analyse consumer spending, and someone somewhere has a list of every phone number you’ve ever called. If you pay with a card, you can’t even order a meal in a restaurant anymore without leaving a trace in a database.
They’re watching you, dudes. They’ve been doing it for years. If you’re not prepared to become some mountain hermit hillbilly living on squirrels you shot all by yourself, just grow up and deal.
Link | September 9th, 2009 at 1:05 am