Sometime in the next decade, pretty much everybody will be wearing mixed reality glasses. When that happens, the technology will be there for the world around us to be captured, at all times, from the point of view of every single person.
So here’s a scenario we might try to work to avoid: There’s a lot of money to be made by mining all that data. So much money in fact, that if I were a major multinational corporation, I would do anything and everything to secure my right to access that massive digital goldmine.
Which means, on a practical level, that a very large amount of money will be available to flow to politicians over the course of the next decade to secure that access. The ability for these corporations to know anything and everything about the whereabouts and activities of all citizens could come to be seen as a cornerstone of our digital economy.
That will be the scenario unless we collectively have the awareness to decide otherwise. In such a scenario, if you oppose that unfettered access, you may come to be seen as a kind of cyber-terrorist. In particular, you may stand accused of attacking the very core of our nation’s economic well-being, in the name of what will be called an outdated definition of individual privacy.
That will not be a good thing.