I have been a boater for a long time. Ever since the advent of navigation software in the early 90s I have been accumulating tracks. Those dotted lines that follow my boat across the electronic chart. I am closing in on twenty years of tracks and going back and looking at them would be fun. I have upgraded and changed platforms to the extent that going back and mining those tracks is probably more work than I will ever do. Maybe some long dark winter.
Now with GPS in my cars and phone, creating my personal track could be pretty fun. When i think of the ultimate personal new years day review of the prior year, it would be cool to replay my track for the year on a globe. I suspect it will be a few years until it is easy enough to do this. For starters, right now I have no idea how to get my gps data out of my car.
If pressed to guess who will figure this out, I would say it will be Google. Mash together an android phone and maps and presto. Zoom right into street view and it would be just like reliving any part of my past. Cool.... Yikes! Some of this information could be sensitive. Do I want to see my personal track badly enough to give that data to Google?
This brings up the best tweet I saw this week: If you are notpaying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold” I think this is attributed to @lawrencebrown. It is more accurate to say that your data is being sold.
As we rush into using these cool new gizmos we are going to have to think more about this stuff.