My iPhone keeps track of everywhere I go and everyone that I call. It knows when I sleep, when I wake, and how active I am. It has the names and numbers of all of my friends and access to all of my emails, social networks, and even to the health information collected by apps that I’ve installed.
Google has a one-up on my iPhone. It reads my emails before I do and knows what I am thinking by analyzing what I search for on the Internet and which Web sites I visit. It “knows” what other people think about me. If my friend and noted futurist Ray Kurzweil succeeds in his mission at Google, it will also understand my wants and needs. It will be able to predict what I want to search for, where I want to go, and what I want to eat. It will understand how my brain thinks and know me better than my wife does.
Apple and Google would make Big Brother jealous. Yet we voluntarily offer these companies, and others, our deeply personal information because it makes our lives better.