Interesting snippet where Jeff Jarvis talks about the benefits of sharing the non-functioning of his penis publicly and Andre Keen looks to a future where technology catches up with our needs – where we become the masters of technology and not technology our masters.

On the question of sharing: Jarvis makes the point that 600,000 share aspects of their ideas and doings on Facebook because we are essentially social animals. Maybe (though I tend to agree with Keen that this socialness is way overplayed by the internet lovers), but Facebook doesn’t exist to satisfy this human imperative to socialise. Facebook exists as a commercial enterprise. It’s ‘commerce’ is our socialness and its power lies in the potential to exploit/monetise our social graphs in the same way that through the ‘loyality card’ the supermarket gets a load of data about our purchasing habits – data which it uses to increase its profits. For both Tesco and Facebook, the drive to collect data is a drive to increase dividends. Of course you don’t have to have a loyalty card in the same way that you don’t need to have a Facebook account – but for many that loyalty card or that Facebook profile is a cultural default. The exception is the opt-out. That’s why it’s an issue of privacy which needs to be debated.