Privacy advocates. Their concerns that corporations and governments will be able to follow their every move! Monitor what they buy. Know their every deed. What a joke. Nothing has changed.

Throughout Human history we’ve been monitored. We’ve been tracked. It’s only the size of our own worlds that have changed. One hundred, two hundred, three hundred years ago we were tracked just as effectively, only we lived in smaller scopes. We shopped near to where we lived, and worked nearby too. Why? We had to walk, so our scope, our worlds, were smaller. We had no televisions and telephones. Our towns were our worlds.

If you bought a particular medicine from the local pharmacist that was indicative of an embarrassing ailment, the pharmacist would know. If you had a proclivity for peanut butter or excessive amounts of alcohol, it was known by the local shopkeep. News of this would not spread by a digital flow, but rather by rumor and word of mouth. All the townspeople within your scope would have shopped at that very same store and gotten drugs from that very same pharmacist. For better or for worse, private things about you would eventually become well known within your scope. If you were an alcoholic, an insomniac, or sexually promiscuous, it would be known.

Now our scope is larger. It is any place from which a database could be accessed. All your wonts and attributes can be known the world over.

But from a practical standpoint, what has changed but the scope?