[xoxoxoBruce]

An entertaining speech tying together online privacy, the dangers and benefits of personal data gathering, and how it powers the web.

All of us are early adopters of another idea— that everyone should always be online. Those of us in this room have benefitted enormously from this idea. We're at this conference because we've built our careers around it. But enough time has passed that we're starting to see the shape of the online world to come. It doesn't look appealing at all. At times it looks downright scary.
~snip~
The online world is very different. Online, everything is recorded by default, and you may not know where or by whom. If you've ever wondered why Facebook is such a joyless place, even though we've theoretically surrounded ourselves with friends and loved ones, it's because of this need to constantly be wearing our public face. Facebook is about as much fun as a zoning board hearing.
~snip~
Google's answer is, wake up, grandpa, this is the new normal. But all they're doing is trying to port a bug in the Internet over to the real world, and calling it progress.
You can dress up a bug and call it a feature. You can also put dog crap in the freezer and call it ice cream. But people can taste the difference.
~snip~
Much of the current debate around the NSA involves making minor changes to this secret mechanism. Americans have an almost perverse faith in the rule of law. They believe that, as long as the secret courts are making sure the secret police obey the secret laws, our democracy is safe.
~snip~
These big collections of personal data are like radioactive waste. It's easy to generate, easy to store in the short term, incredibly toxic, and almost impossible to dispose of. Just when you think you've buried it forever, it comes leaching out somewhere unexpected.
~snip~
Recall that advertising is when someone pays you to tell your users they'll be happy if they buy a product or service. Yahoo is an example of a company that runs on advertising. Gawker is a company that runs on advertising.

Investor storytime is when someone pays you to tell them how rich they'll get when you finally put ads on your site. Pinterest is a site that runs on investor storytime. Most startups run on investor storytime.