Commentary: Privacy, A Vending Machine Novelty

These days it seems like everyone is trying to sell you something, whether it be online, over the phone, or directly to your face. We as consumers cannot go a week without at least ten telemarketer calls at 9 AM while on our way to work, or school, whichever it may be. It is mind-boggling how many companies exist solely for the purpose of making your mornings hell, or as Brad Pitt put it in Fight Club, how you go to work just to go home and buy "crap we don’t need."

American consumerism is at its best these days, purchasing a book from Amazon or having people deliver your groceries to your doorstep without you leaving the house. I've always said before that laziness, not necessity, is the mother of all invention. But with this invention of e-commerce and the Internet comes a price, a pretty high price if you consider the implications of what information about you is floating around on the Net.

Just about anyone with the right contacts and resources could easily access your medical records, social security number, name, telephone number, address, information about your family, house, and even employment. Just a name and social security number alone is enough to destroy someone’s life if the effort is put forth.

Every time you shop online you divulge a wealth of information that could lead to major problems should that information fall into the wrong hands. You trust Amazon, or Buy.com to hold your credit card information as sacred as the CEO's firstborn, blindly filling in the information without realizing exactly what you are doing. We all do it, and some of us pay the price.

But if you think it's bad now, take a glimpse into the future. Currently, your pet dog can have a small microchip implanted in the skin of the neck that provides information about the dog and owner. It is an electronic version of those heart-shaped tags most normally get their pet. Things start small and work their way up. Who knows, in the future you may just scan your wrist instead of showing the policeman your driver's license when he pulls you over for doing 83 in a 55 mile-per-hour zone.

Biotechnology is an ever-growing industry. Retinal scanning and fingerprint identification is already the wave of the future in the tech industry, and soon enough the government may have a record of your DNA on file just in case.

Of course there are benefits to this technology, but it may not be such a good idea to have your information lying in some "digital safe" the government thinks is impenetrable. Unfortunately, nothing is unbreakable.

My question is how far is it going to go? The digital train is coming through and it doesn't look like it will be stopping anytime soon. Where do we as humans draw the line ethically? Are we as a society going to end up like the movie Gattaca, where our blood is tested when we arrive at work every morning?

Better still, how do we stop the train? As we move forward in the 21st century, keep your eyes out at the gas station for the vending machine that sells privacy at two dollars a shot, because it soon will be a thing of the past.