By Michael Evans

     How do you spell “world domination”?  Google.

     This is not the first time the thought has occurred to me and I'm certain it won't be the last.  I am not a technophobe; I love technology.  I stopped wearing watches years ago when I realized that I always seemed to have three or four digital clocks in eyesight at any given moment and didn’t see the need to strap one to my arm anymore.  Even now as I write this article on my BlackBerry Bold, I need only press a few buttons to know the time not just here in my piece of the cold (25 degrees) and currently windy state of Minnesota, but pretty much anywhere in the world.  And I have no fewer than four other devices within an 8 foot radius.

     Technology is very cool.  But the things we are doing with it are also very scary.

     This week, I was killing some time tooling around with Google Maps and managed pull up a bird's-eye aerial satellite view of my street.  I also pulled up an interactive photograph of my house from that street, where I could clearly see my wife's car parked in the driveway.  I could pan around and get a continuous view not only of my house, but any house I wanted to see in my neighborhood.  It was, beyond receiving a live video feed, the next best thing to actually being there.

     It was a simultaneously cool and frightening experience.

     I started to contemplate all the little ways Google has managed to infiltrate my life.  Its search engine is usually one of my first stops in indulging my frequent nonlinear flights of mental whimsy, like the time I wanted to find out when "Bust a Move" was released (1989) or yesterday when I had to know the top five Google search terms for 2009 (Michael Jackson, Facebook, Tuenti, Twitter, Sanalika).

     Google Maps can use my BlackBerry's built-in GPS or a form of cell tower triangulation (and for the techies out there reading this, I know it's not true triangulation) to not only determine where I am at any given moment, but also show me where my friends are, local traffic patterns, bus routes, stores and restaurants, user photos of the area's sights and sounds, and even pull up Wikipedia articles submitted by people who have far more time on their hands than me to write about such things.

     My Google Wave account provides me with a new and frequently confusing way to connect with others both near and far.  Google Reader follows the myriad RSS sites to which I subscribe in my ongoing efforts to remain aware of what's going on in the world.  Google Calendar combines and consolidates my numerous schedules so that I know when I need to be where.  Google Voice allows me to make free phone calls within the US using my cell phone and can even store and transcribe voicemail messages and forward the transcriptions to my GMail account.

     All free of cost.  But is it really?  Is there a price to signing away one’s privacy?

     Granted, in my case, I freely and voluntarily contributed much of this information.  But there's a lot of it that Google already knew long before I had even heard of these services.  And even removing Google from the equation, it seems to me that we are all giving away elements of our lives for some payoff or other.  That little supermarket swipe card that we use to save money when we go shopping gives the store fresh data about our buying habits (when, where, how much).  Downloading a free version of software or signing up for an e-newsletter gives the company permission to install spyware directly onto our hard drives to track our web browsing patterns.  That mobile phone we use to stay connected to family and friends probably contains a SIM card or GPS device that allows the phone company to track not only who we call, but also our location.

     This information doesn't simply sit in some isolated database, either.  It's being used all the time, every day.  An article in PC World revealed that in the last year, Sprint responded to 8 million requests for customers' whereabouts from law enforcement.   The same article mentioned the fact that Palm’s devices frequently sends data on users' location and usage data back to the company.

     I don't doubt that these are all generally valid and legal things companies can do in return for their services and products.  We're used to these things in light of the Patriot Act, so much so that the average citizen today is far more concerned about whether Facebook is going to use subscriber photos and other images in ads without their expressed permission.  But where is all of this data collection ultimately going to take us as a society?

     Are the benefits of convenience, savings, speed of service, or safety really worth the data we're exchanging for them?  The information probably does help emergency service personnel respond more quickly to those who need them.  The data probably has led to the apprehension of criminals and even the deterrence or prevention of crime.  But, like the people who use it, it's far from imperfect.  Our technology might have enabled troops overseas to find Saddam Hussein in a hole in the ground, but we still can't touch Osama bin Laden.  Nor did technology stop two wanna-be celebrities from crashing that White House State dinner the media seems to think we need to know everything about.

     Tiger Woods recently said that public figures should have the right to a "simple, human measure of privacy".  While it’s debatable how far that privacy should extend for the person who uses their public status and image to endorse products and services for compensation, I do think Tiger has a point, albeit one that should extend to everyone.

     But I also think Tiger's probably not the biggest fan of cell phones at the present moment.