Privacy - moving in many directions

There are two big news items about privacy today. The first is that the new coalition government in the UK  is going to do away with systems that would collect masses of data about its citizens. The other is concerns directed at Google for its face recognition software that some fear would make stalking and surveillance too easy.

There's also the dichotomy here of information that governments hold versus what is available publicly on the internet. The British government is far more meddlesome that most and a correction is certainly warranted. I hope this is indicative of a trend away from big government data bases of personal information.

Over dinner last night, we were discussing the future of privacy. What will it look like in 20-30 years when the Facebook generation, people who have grown up putting their every movement, thought and picture into the public eye, are making the rules. For them, sharing masses of information is the norm. Given that fundamentally new baseline expectation, what will privacy look like. Either, privacy will continue to erode,  or there will be some event which triggers a massive backlash against sharing private information. I think the first is more likely.

Terracotta Warriors in London

For any of you who have not been to China, but might be going to London any time soon, be sure to go to the British Museum, where the largest ever exhibition of the terracotta figures outside of China will be held until April 6.

I visited China in the summer of 2000 with my mother. It included a few days in Xian, where the army was discovered. When the figures are first unearthed, they are quite vividly colored, but the paint quickly fades with exposure to the air. They are leaving some portions of the army unexcavated, in the hopes there will be better technology/methods to preserve that color in the future.