Just google. Master of our history

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Imagine there is a list somewhere that contains the address of every web page you have visited in the last five years. It also contains information about what you've ever searched on the web, every address you viewed on Google Maps, every email you sent, every chat message, every YouTube video you watched. Each entry is time-stamped, so it's clear to the minute exactly what you did and when.

Now imagine that this list is indexed and searchable. And it lies in a perfectly designed and easy-to-use form on some website. Consider how valuable such a source of information would be to someone who has bad intentions against you.

Well, after you've presented all this, go to google.com/dashboard and see it all in reality. This is a summary of all the information Google has collected about us. Although no, what I'm saying is, of course, not all, but only what can be shown to us. I analyzed the data contained in my Google Dashboard and presented it in the form of a small infographic. It turned out to be a pretty interesting picture.

Some remarks in favor of Google. First, this data can only be collected if you are logged into your Google account. Secondly, Google gives us the ability to disable the collection of information in many ways or delete the collected data. And thirdly, access to all this information is password protected.

The very idea that all this data exists in the form of a mass of zeros and ones somewhere deep underground on a server farm in California, studied and analyzed by soulless robots to improve search results and more relevant advertising, smells like some kind of dark futurology.

But it all exists and works right now. And if someone manages to get access to all this array of information, and such a chance exists and it is quite real, then these “someone” could dig a lot of interesting things for almost every user. The possibilities for blackmail, theft, penetration into private life are almost endless.

For example, how many people, even in minor government and public positions, let alone politicians, would pay the ransom for NOT posting their web browsing or search history? And how many husbands or wives would like the history of their personal correspondence and chats to remain secret? Perhaps there are “interesting” addresses in your story that you searched for on Google Maps or the GPS tracked by your Android phone? Or maybe your vulnerability in the history of payments with your credit card?

But there is another side to this phenomenon. In the long run, our internet history will become a form of our memory, in some ways much more powerful than what our brains are capable of today. Google services are still young, but have already managed to collect a huge amount of information about us. What will happen in the future, as Google continues to penetrate our reality?

In a little while, Google will be able to paint an accurate picture of our past - who we were - more detailed than the best human memory. Imagine that recalling a certain day 20 years ago, we can immediately see photos of people with whom we spoke that day, find out what we talked about, the files they sent us. We will be able to see the places we visited that day, the photos we took, the phone numbers we dialed, the shopping list, the weather, and so on. All your activity on any day of your life will lie before us in all the details. But soon we are waiting for Google Glass glasses, which will record our every step …

Perhaps the All-Seeing Eye of the Great Google, having analyzed our habits and interests, will be able to know even more about us than we ourselves know about ourselves? He will be able to warn us about a predisposition to dangerous diseases, he will be able to help us choose a job to our liking, find an optimal partner, and suggest a way out in difficult life situations. The whole point is only in the array of accumulated knowledge and algorithms for their processing, isn't it gentlemen programmers?

The worldwide information base collected by Google can be a huge evil, which will not even leave a trace of such concepts as "privacy" and "privacy", so that the darkest dystopian novels seem like children's fairy tales. But it can also become a universal good mind, affectionately taking care of every inhabitant of this planet. Take a look while you read this article, the future has already arrived. How do you see it?