www.flickr.com

16.7.09

Control is an illusion?

In a recent interview with the Digital Photography Review web magazine a Nokia representative talks about convergence devices like the N86 mobile phone incorporating an 8MP digital still camera and aiming to replace digital compact cameras in many peoples' pockets. Read the story here.

Seemingly unrelated, The Register has an article about a provider in the United Arab Emirates pushing a trojan horse program as a software update to their customers Blackberry smart phones. The sting was only accidentally discovered and if anything can be learned from that, it is that stuff like that is not just overheated imagination of a few conspiracy theorists but happening right now under our very eyes.

This got me thinking. Do I really want all those features crammed into a connected device I have no control over? Each and every feature requires me to provide more, sensitive information. Phone books are no longer just phone books but store email and postal addresses of my contacts. browsers store web site credentials, Ebay, not to mention PayPal accounts. All my data under the reign of a software that can be changed at any time, without me even noticing.

I may want my camera be a camera, and my mobile phone be just that and nothing else.

No comments:

Post a Comment