SporkBomb

Stream of consciousness…

Remember when MySpace was the only big game in town? Many of your friends had profiles full of tasty information. Perhaps you studied your friends’ profiles in–let’s just say–painstaking detail. You may have even found out information about your friends that you didn’t know. They put stuff online which they didn’t even tell you in person. They put it all online for everyone to see. Weird, huh?

Remember FaceBook? Remember when all of your college friends were on FaceBook? Remember how you used to look up girls/boys which were in your classes and use the information gathered for various “investigative” reasons. All that information that was out there probably caused some tension. I’m just guessing; I never went to college… in that way.

The point is information. The more you know, the more power you have over the present, as well as over the future. We all strive to have more information because we instinctively know that it will help us with survival and procreation.

One secret revealed caused the New York governor Eliot Spitzer to resign. How many can come forward and say they don’t have any secrets which they’re not afraid to share with the whole world?

The more power you have, the more you’re able to influence other peoples’ lives. You become the present day incarnation of a 4th century Byzantine emperor. It’s really hard to deal with the realization that you have power over many people–that they have to do anything you command them to. Better yet, many of the people you rule over worship you. Surely that’s an unwelcome boost to your ego.

History is full of people who have used great power in order to make the lives of other people better. There’s no denying this. The problem is that in the succession of power, the good people tend to die and go away, but the power stays there for the taking.

I believe that Larry Page and Sergey Brin are largely responsible for the–up to this point–responsible use of knowledge by Google. They are also responsible for the current culture at Google. This is a culture of decent respect for peoples’ privacy (or in other words, it’s respect for the people’s lives because by not breaching people’s privacy, you’re effectively granting them liberty from yourself and your agents).

What happens when Larry and Sergey step down? What’s to prevent the business equivalent of the Roman emperor Caligula from taking over after a few successive owner/CEO generations? Who’s to say that all your porn browsing won’t come to bite you in the nether regions when this new emperor decides that you don’t belong in government?

Sadly, I don’t have any answers.

Most people I know who use Gmail sign in by simply going to gmail.com. Hell, up to a few weeks ago I used to do the same thing. When you sign in like that your authentication is perfectly secure because you’re using Google’s SSL certificate. However, once you’re signed in, you’re on your own! There is nothing stopping random people from sniffing your traffic and getting your banking information and social security number. There is also nothing preventing Paul Asadoorian from changing your default language.

Here’s a little trick to keep your connection to the Google mail servers secure. When signing in use the following link: https://mail.google.com. This way you will stay encrypted even after you authenticate. Also, if you use a nifty little Firefox extension by the name of Curtomize Google you can also set the option there to always make sure your traffic to google mail (and other google services) is always encrypted.