There is reason to be scared. Look at what has happened with fundamentalism - this is a reaction against modernity. It happens to be cloaked in religion, but these are people saying enough is enough. It's happened again and again through history. The good news is that modernism has always won.
Paul SaffoWe do need to rethink privacy. I think we need to fall back on (former Supreme Court Justice) Felix Frankfurter's definition of privacy which is, "Privacy is the right to be left alone."
Paul SaffoAs a global society we are performing a great experiment on ourselves. Half of the world population wants to race faster into the future. Go visit China and India. They're ready to go. And half of the world wants to drag us into the past. The problem is both sides have guns. I think there really is a reaction. A lot of people are saying enough is enough.
Paul SaffoThe future belongs to neither the conduit or content players, but those who control the filtering, searching and sense-making tools we will rely on to navigate through the expanses of cyberspace.
Paul SaffoAs Stewart Brand (co-founder of Emeryville's Global Business Network) likes to say, "Information lasts forever. Digital information lasts forever or for five years, whichever comes first." There are examples everywhere. The tapes from the original Viking landers that went to Mars are at (NASA's) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but there is no machine that can read the tapes.
Paul Saffo