We have seen the scary future – and it is behind the firewall. Let’s say it: The Internet of Things almost seemed useful – smart objects connected together was once a great marketing tag line. Now it is becoming an Orwellian nightmare, not just because Google can drive the car while you text. Now we know your car has millions of lines of code in it and is easily hacked by two guys on a couch with a laptop. Volkswagen’s internal hacking, uh, deception to meet emissions standards has given visibility to the Internet of Cheating Things, not to mention the Internet of Hacked Things (from drones!!), and Scammed Things (from the refrigerator!!). And just think how obsolete CES "crap gadgets" will seem after the 2016 CES – the real tech news will be these long-distance and unwelcome invaders from afar, redirecting gadgets on the show floor.
Does anyone remember Y2K? It happened just 15 years ago. The $100 billion in the US -- $350 billion worldwide -- that was spent to convert information systems to move from a 2-digit year to a 4-digit year, well, it seems so last century. The belief at that time: The move from the YYMM format of dates in all systems everywhere (all military, government, and commercial) in the year 2000 would create a "0001" January 1, 2000 date format that would result in disaster. Checks couldn’t be issued, military systems would fail, hospitals and power plants would shut down or off. This was preceded by sky-is-falling anxiety, particularly among IT people who bore the brunt of redirecting work to code this change.
I quit Facebook and life, such as it was, went on. I quit because its business tactics were becoming ever so more UnFriendly-like -- from experiments with the product of us to selling your browsing history to selling your facial profile to advertisers. Then over to tracking your TV-watching habits and listening to voices on your mobile device, Facebook will soon opt into your health information -- thus forcing more privacy Opt-Outs. So time without Facebook slowly passed, then the 14-day post-deletion period -- are you sure, sure, sure? You can still re-activate! -- that grace period came and quietly went. No one, myself included, noticed my disappearance on that day. I did not request my archive of 7+ years of posts, I did not write down a list of those 300 or so folks that I had 'friended' over the years, apparently an average number for all users, and I did not note the businesses that had requested that I Like them. Without a glance back, I left all those pictures of just-cooked or about-to-be-eaten meals, graduation pictures of people I no longer knew (and thus probably don't really Like all that much), timelines, new feeds, and even groups, including alumni of gone companies from my many gone jobs. But I am not the only one departing -- looks like some younger people are getting out too.
Tech we talk about -- health -- the much-hyped investment opportunity. We talk ad nauseum about health innovation, often in the context of an aging society -- from StartupHealth, Rock Health, Health 2.0, and AARP's own Health@50+. And we're wired beyond saturation with new health device tech announcements, from the advance swooning about Apple everything (never seen so many health dreams and now, security worries!) and Samsung nearly-everything-else (never seen so many device shapes!) And there was plenty of health tech talk at the AARP Ideas@50+ in San Diego -- see Health Interactive@50+.
