ABSTRACT
Before you recoil in horror at this new picture of reality and the nearly complete loss of any anonymity, stop and think about how much more identifiable and traceable you are today than you were just ten years ago. If you are anything like me, and if you’re reading this book that’s a fair comparison, then you spend your life tethered to devices and tracked by sensors already. If I want to find out where you are and what you are doing, it doesn’t take much more than basic access to the Internet. My point is that we are giving away personal liberty, and have been for some time, in exchange for convenience and value. This does not mean that we should not fight zealously to protect our privacy, but that we should also fight zealously for value in exchange for giving any part of it away. In the cloud, that struggle will be vastly more profound than it is today.
