People are frustrated and confused. Sometimes it seems that every program, every Web site, every device has its own set of rules. For instance, entering a friends new phone number into your PC requires a particular sequence of keystrokes and mouse clicks. But to enter that same information into your Palm Pilot, Pocket PC, or cell phone, you have to learn a completely different interface right down to relearning how to draw the letters of the alphabet!

People are not in control of the technology that surrounds them. We have important data and personal information scattered in hundreds of places across the technology landscape, locked away in applications, product registration databases, cookies, and Web site user tracking databases. Having a friends phone number programmed into your cell phone doesn’t make the number available to your PC-based email application: those two technologies are unable talk to each other.

If you move across the country, you have to enter your new address into every Web site that needs it and if you forget to change your information with your travel agent or shipping company, the once-convenient Internet quickly becomes a headache. Each Web site is an isolated island of data that continually reinforces the fact that you dont control your personal information. You cant easily update your own data, nor do you control what happens to the data you provide and in many cases, you cant even see it once.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, April 28th, 2001 at 12:43 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.