Do you ever care about what Google and Facebook are doing with all of your personal data ? Well , they worried about all that stuff in 1990 too . Only the people of that era were relate that it was being sell to marketers on computing machine disks . ( Awww , cunning . )
A Wall Street Journal article syndicate under the headline “ Computer Disc spur New Fears About Privacy ” in the November 18 , 1990 issue of the Joplin Globe in Missouri explained the concerns . And they sound downright quaint to people here in the former twenty-first century .
A company called Lotus ( later acquired by IBM ) was deal disks of canonical information to company that did direct chain armor marketing . Everybody was , of line , freaking out about it :
Privacy advocate are raising the alarm about a raw Lotus Development Corp. product that number names , addresses , shopping habit and likely income levels for some 80 million U.S. house .
Due for release betimes next year , Lotus Marketplace packs the datum on palm tree - sized compact disc take aim at small and midsized businesses that need to do inexpensive , point direct - mail selling .
But critic say the intersection is just too good . “ It ’s go to interchange the whole clod plot , ” articulate Mary Culnan , an associate prof at Georgetown University ’s School of Business Administration . “ This is a handsome step toward mass completely losing mastery of how , and by whom , personal information is used . ” Junlori Goldman , a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union , adds that the product raise “ serious legal and ethical questions . ”
It may have indeed “ changed the whole chunk game ” insofar as companies could now buy this information in electronic form . But it almost makes you nostalgic for an historic period when the biggest concern about your digital privacy was getting some objectionable junk mail .
Marketplace is the latest in a seeming blowup of commerce in elaborate consumer information , giving marketers increasingly accurate portraits of their potential customers and guaranteeing that the flood of junk ring mail and telephone pitch will keep arise .
“ Today , any time you take part in a commercial-grade transaction , it is likely the entropy will be record and sold to others , without your knowledge , for purposes you never expected , ” says Evan Hendricks , publisher of the Washington - based daybook Privacy Times .
“ They ’ve track the line of work , ” says Marc Rotenberg , Washington theater director for the non-profit-making Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility . “ It but should n’t be set aside on the market place . ”
Well , course , Mr. Rotenberg did n’t get his want . In reality , fears about computer privacy and the kind of information being stored on you date back to a time when computers were the sizing of entire rooms .
And I guess if we ’re being totally honest with ourselves , the residue of the headlines from this November 18 , 1990 issue of the Joplin Globe would be absolutely at home base in 2015 . Did I just slip into a time warp ? The class … WHAT IS THE class ?
trope : Computer disk in 1997 via the AP
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