Summary: (http://kamlashow.com/podcast/wp-content/uploads/adam_greenfield.jpg)Privacy online is a big hot button issue these days. Much before it went mainstream, Adam Greenfield (http://www.v-2.org/) has been talking about and wrote a fascinating book called, "Everyware." (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321384016/qid=1139511165/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-5073978-9810566?n=507846&s=books&v=glance) Currently he is head of design direction for service and user-interface design at Nokia, Finland. Adam says everyware is "information processing embedded in the objects and surfaces of everyday life." Or, as he puts it, "the colonization of our everyday life," by technology. Naota Fukasawa san (http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/fukasawa.html) famously describes (http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/fukasawa.html) this kind of behavior (http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/fukasawa.html)in an elegant and simple way: "Design dissolving in behavior." That is, our actions are so unconscious that we are not even aware of the underlying technology that makes our unconscious acts possible. These devices are essentially invisible, or attain near invisibility that we don't pay attention to them. Everyware is an umbrella term that Adam coined to capture the unfolding of this fast moving phenomena that many of us are not paying attention. An interesting upshot of this everyware technology is that people are unaware they are using it extensively. An old example of this is the cell phone, but that has been replaced by new and nifty devices that we use in our everyday life, and we are not even aware of them Adam explains. Some of them include the touch and go pay system credit card that Chase Bank has introduced in New York; the RFID technology that is used to tag goods; and in some cases used to tag people (some patients have RFID chips embedded in their arm that help doctors get instant access to their medical history and prescription); the instrumented floors used to build houses for senior citizens in South Korea and these are just a few examples of how technology is increasingly meshed into our lifestyle. And with IPV6, (http://www.ipv6.org/) the next generation Internet, Adam thinks that every grain of sand in the world could have an IP address. Every device at that point could have multiple IP addresses. The fact that every object in the world could potentially have an IP address is partly what worries him. Through this book Adam wants to create an awareness of the unintended consequences of everyware and the impact that it will have in our collective lives. One of the worrying aspects of this development is that all kinds of information can be gathered, tagged, stored and searched for future reference. So, every action of yours persists in some kind of a meta database for a long time. That in turn has him worried about privacy issues, and how that will impact society. By addressing these issues early on in the debate perhaps some of these issues can be addressed and corrected is his line of reasoning. Adam is in some ways advancing and pushing forward a debate that Howard Rheingold (http://www.smartmobs.com/) of Smartmobs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_mobs) started a few years ago with the coming of IRC, mobile phones and PDAs. Adam was involved with the first Moblogging Conference that took place in Tokyo in 2003. This interview was recorded in Manhattan in 2005 and first played in February 2006.
