[Reader-list] Somebody's Watching Me

[Kanti Bit]

Dear All,

The June 4 issue of TIME magazine focusses on
interactive technologies and how they are affecting
our lives. Following is one of the interesting
articles. Read it online at:
<http://www.time.com/time/interactive/living/stalking_np.html>

Somebody's Watching Me 
My inner stalker loves GPS. My inner Shaggy's a little
paranoid. Maybe those satellites should stick to
tracking missiles 
By MAUREEN TKACIK 

A few years ago I didn't turn in my keys to the
company car at the end of the week, and I and one very
dreamy grad student hijacked it to New York. A few
weeks ago I spent the whole night at the office, most
of it surfing the Internet, some of it sleeping under
my cubicle, a very small chunk of it reporting this
story. A few times in high school I told my mom I was
going to the movies when, in fact, I was going to very
large keg parties that were customarily very lacking
in adult supervision. And in a few days I am flying to
Italy for a weekend, which is something else I didn't
want my mom to know because she'd think I was being
sooooo impractical. Which I am.

I'm not telling you all this because I'm compulsively
confessional, which I also am, being female and
American and Oprah-watching, but that's another story.
I'm telling you this to give you some examples of the
sins of omission I have committed that, in a year or
so, I will no longer be able to commit (or omit)
because my mobile phone, by law, will give me away. A
teensy chip in a tiny chipset somewhere in the inner
workings of my cell-phone handset will alert some 27
satellites, known as the global positioning system
(originally launched by and for the U.S. military to
keep track of missiles and stuff), of my whereabouts.
Enough of those satellites will beam back my location
to my carrier that it will have a pretty good idea
(within a dozen or so meters) where I am and it will,
depending upon my preferences, be empowered to pass
that information on to my employers, my buds, my loved
ones.

This makes me paranoid. This I have in common with
Shaggy. For those of you who might have missed it,
Shaggy is the quadruple-platinum-selling Ricky Martin
of reggae. He is also a technological prophet, as
those who have seen the music video to his obscenely
catchy single, It Wasn't Me, would know. The song is
about a wannabe playa whose lady catches him, ahem,
hangin' with the girl next door. Its name comes from
the oaf's absurd, shameless alibi, and to hear the
lyrics, you'd think this lady was just another
Oprah-watching female American victim. But on screen,
she's craftier than Lara Croft. She spies on her beau,
narrow-eyed, everywhere he goes, using a little
handheld device that looks suspiciously like the
latest Nokia handset. He can't hide. He definitely
can't escape. Big Sistah is watching. And Big Sistah's
got a GPS receiver.

It's an empowering concept, sure. But it's also a
little, uh, freaky. Remember, I think to myself, that
guy in 10th grade? With the sloppy long hair and
regulation Oxford and those very, very piercing eyes?
Remember his schedule, how you nervously ambled into
the front office and flipped through the binder and
memorized it so you could secretly coordinate that
vital hall time? Remember wondering where he drove in
that beat-up Volkswagen after soccer practice? Before
he went home to West Springfield, zip code 22310?
Technology changes, but not people. I didn't have a
cell phone then; neither did Kevin; neither did
anyone. But what if ...

But back to reality. 

The reality, in 2001, is that my high-school freshman
sister has a cell phone and that I occasionally plug
Kevin's name into a Google search field. And that cell
phone carriers in the U.S. are scrambling to meet the
fall deadline to start rolling out
location-pinpointing services that, by law, will have
to be reliable enough to track all their cell-phone
subscribers at least 66% of the time. The only people
who will have die-hard access to this information are
the folks who answer emergency calls to 911. They're
the folks who lobbied for the GPS regulation, known as
E-911, in the first place because they were getting
countless mobile cries for help that they couldn't
track down. But others can pinpoint you, too, though
they'll need to pay a fee and have some kind of
permission.

I may be paranoid, but the reality also is, I will
give them all permission. Gladly. I'll let my
boyfriend program his phone to ring whenever we're in
the same part of town. I'll let my parents and my
"buddy list" follow my tracks. I'll even let Starbucks
in on my whereabouts if it means the occasional
m-commerce cappuccino coupon for the disclosure. Heck,
this is useful stuff, this location-pinpointing
technology. A GPS-aided map could have saved me hours
in that company car I drove so cluelessly around town
when I was using it for work (before I hijacked it).
GPS is already helping thousands of Japanese keep
track of elderly parents, wayward toddlers and
straying pets. Next year-who knows?—it could help an
awkward, well-meaning member of Generation Y more
satisfactorily establish whether that brooding
soccer-playing kid really is her soul mate. 

Freaky.