It's Happening

We're not a fast blog. We're not a slow blog. We're a half fast blog... (Borrowed from a trivet that used to hang on my Mom's kitchen wall, along with all the other kitch she loved!)

Here's a story that is already yesterday's news. But it is huge. It has the potential to totally change the game. And John Battelle was onto it long before the fetid idea ever crept from the bowels of Bush's DOJ. Don't Look Now, But It's Happening

From my book, written a year or so ago:

As we move our data to the servers at Amazon.com, Hotmail.com, Yahoo.com, and Gmail.com, we are making an implicit bargain, one that the public at large is either entirely content with, or, more likely, one that most have not taken much to heart.

That bargain is this: we trust you to not do evil things with our information. We trust that you will keep it secure, free from unlaw- ful government or private search and seizure, and under our control at all times. We understand that you might use our data in aggregate to provide us better and more useful services, but we trust that you will not identify individuals personally through our data, nor use our personal data in a manner that would violate our own sense of privacy and freedom.

If you go to one place to follow this unfolding story, go to SearchBlog. Here are some other posts of his on this topic:
What's the Big Deal?
More On The Slippery Slope
MSN: What We Gave the Govt.
Yahoo's Jeremy Is Disappointed, I'm Bewildered

Hell, I use google and gmail all the time. Blogger publishes this modest Jones O mine. You bet I care about this one.

It really is time to re-read 1984. Scary times.