The Price of Progress?

New technologies often have unintended consequences.

People think that they can control new technologies, but in fact, once released, it is technologies that control people. Oddly enough.

When the automobile was invented, it was clearly a much better way to get from point A to point B than by horse – which is how everyone had gotten around since time immemorial.

No one really gave a thought to the idea that the car would also unleash fast food chains, gas stations, Holiday Inns, suburbia and possibly global warming and the end of the world as we know (knew) it.

Unintended consequences.

The invention of the Internet, perhaps the greatest disruptive technology since the printing press also carries with it unintended consequences.

Up until now, all media (newspapers, magazines, TV, movies, radio) have been one way or passive. That is, we make it, you watch it, or read it, or listen to it. It’s a pretty simple relationship.

All ‘broadcast’ or print technology has only allowed this one-way traffic of content – and so we think that way. It’s natural and instinctive.

When ‘old’media move to the web, they carry that kind of thinking with them.  The New York Times online is essentially a passive medium – we make it, you read it. OK, you read it on a sceen, but you read it.  We make it. Likewise Hulu.  And lots of other things.

When people invent new industries for the web, they are inherently different. Facebook: Everyone makes it, everyone reads it.  eBay: everyone puts stuff into it.  Wikipedia, YouTube, Instagram.. and so on.

See the difference?

It’s in the DNA of the web – this ‘interactivity’.

But, as I said at the beginning, new technologies carry with them unintended or unforseen consequences.

One of the unforseen consequences began to emerge yesterday in a small and largely unnoticed piece in PC WORLD:

www.pcworld.com/article/2018940/verizon-patents-dvr-that-tracks-your-actions.html

In essence, Verizon has patented a technology that would allow them to ‘watch’ you while you ‘watched’ them.  (And listen to you as well).  Well, as I said in the beginning, the web goes ‘both’ ways.  TV only goes ‘one’ way. We are used to a passive media experience.  It isn’t.

The communications company has filed for a patent of a DVR that can monitor your actions to better target advertisements to you. According to the details of the patent—published online Nov. 29 after it was first filed in May 2011—if you’re working out, talking on the phone, or holding hands with your significant other, the shows you watch would play corresponding ads.

Verizon’s set-top box would even parse words from your conversations and detect moods to better market to you; the patent application describes sensing a viewer’s stress and advertising aromatherapy candles or a resort.

Now to be fair to Verizon, they have not implemented these things.

In a statement to NBC News, Verizon said it “has a well-established track record of respecting its customers’ privacy and protecting their personal information. As a company that prizes innovation, Verizon takes pride in its innovators whose work is represented in our patents and patent applications. While we do not comment on pending patent applications, such futuristic patent filings by innovators are routine.”

But clearly the technology is there.

And Verizon is not the only company looking at this.  Apparently everyone else is as well.

So clearly, someone is going to start using this, or something like it.  If the technology exists, someone will turn it on.

The blogosphere is already filled with endless articles about how the government is already tracking all your emails, Facebook postings, photos and God only knows what else.  (See Petraeus, former General)

Now the idea that your Internet or TV set is going to start watching you watching it is, well, disturbing, but not really surprising when you think about it.

There’s a lovely quote from Inherit the Wind :

Henry Drummond: Progress has never been a bargain. You have to pay for it.
Henry Drummond: Sometimes I think there’s a man who sits behind a counter and says, “All right, you can have a telephone but you lose privacy and the charm of distance.
Henry Drummond: Madam, you may vote but at a price. You lose the right to retreat behind the powder puff or your petticoat.
Henry Drummond: Mister, you may conquer the air but the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline.”

Copyright Michael Rosenblum 2012