VIRTUAL PERSONAL BLACK BOX

Sometime back..actually few years back and to be almost precise, beginning of this millennium I was surfing the web and read some of the trends and technologies predicted by futurists. I guess I read it on BBC website. One that caught my attention was "Personal Black Box".
I was zapped about the stuff I read. The article spoke about a gadget that would record everything you do from morning to night and consistently day after day. Article did not list out any advantages or disadvantages of this but just a prediction as to how future technologies will evolve.
I do not remember the entire article but remember the concept because it just zapped me, imagine there is a record of everything you do. I am sure this sounds crazy and one would wonder what to do with it.
Anyways, as the time passed by I had totally forgotten about it until I read a blog about Orkut. Check it out....http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/001504.html
I always thought this black box would be in the form of gizmo or a gadget but its virtual today. In the backdrop of afore mentioned blog, we are embodied with a VIRTUAL PERSONAL BLACK BOX.
Tons of personal information is shared on orkut. Birthdates, place of birth, friends, hobbies, interests, professional life, photos. You name it, people share it on Orkut.
As the blog mentions, imagine Orkut completely becomes integral part of Google, thinking about it?
Most of us infact use gmail accounts extensively and good amount of personal data is shared thru emails as well. This being the case, someone at Google "exactly" know who you are, what you do, what are the ups and downs happening in your life, how you look and what you are up to in this world.
Sounds interesting, sounds frightening?
That futurists predicted right, future is here, the only difference is it’s a virtual personal black box with unprecedented reach.
By this I am not anti-google, I do not belive that google will ever misuse this "powerful" personal information but definitely will make huge commercial gains from this information.
Personally, I love google for creating some of the best technologies in the recent past. Some of the products under google labs are amazing. Most of the google products are designed to use online, as you move along you will put more and more personal information into the google servers knowingly or unknowingly.

If you are privacy conscious, get off orkut and gmail immediately. YOU ARE BEING WATCHED!!!