Search Engines and Technological Privacy Solutions

It looks like I was beaten to the punch a bit by Ted's comment. You propose some interesting ideas here, Andrei, but even assuming you can get people to see that there is a problem, I, too, wonder if these are solutions people can accept. In my own paper, I argued that part of the reason people don't do the things you propose because they spurn freedom itself, but I also suspect laziness and technological ineptness are also partly to blame. I'll throw myself to the fire by saying that while I have AdBlock? and TrackMeNot? (because they were easy to install and worked in a framework I already understand), really, the only way I will get a wall wart server (might I also embarassingly contend that this name is, well, sort of distasteful to those of us non-tech people that need to be seduced by it?) is if Justin or Ted a) came to my house with the wallwart b) installed the wallwart and c) agreed to maintain the wallwart for me, forever. In some sense, this is just an example of the spurning of freedom I discuss in my paper; I could certainly learn to use this technology--- there is no reason I need others to do it for me--- but despite my strong feelings about these problems, I have yet to take some of these steps because they seem out of (easy) technological reach. I doubt that making the technology easier or integrating it into familiar contexts will have any effect on the underlying problem of rejecting the burdens of freedom, but it may at least cause people to seriously consider the questions, rather than rejecting them outright on ease or ability grounds.

-- DanaDelger - 20 May 2009