So I'm curious if anyone else has ever considered completely going without their mobile device (on a permanent basis).
I have not.
Not only are we losing privacy at an alarming rate, everything we say, do, buy - the places we go...it seems to me that it's all recorded in some way.
The notion of privacy is largely a myth. Critical portions of our lives were largely able to be digitally recreated/reviewed by the government decades ago. Private corporations started sewing those seeds 10-15 years ago. Now there's basically nothing of import or relevance that hasn't been digitally documented, stored, and parsed for querying. You say we're losing privacy - I say we lost it long ago when we accepted the End User Licensing Agreements and Terms and Conditions. Nothing is free. We pay for it with money, personal information, or both.
Make no mistake - every digital platform of consequence out there is now built to gather and query data about you and your behaviors. It's one of the primary tenants of digital design. Facebook, Google, every major social media and digital consumption platform out there knows you better than you do, and they intentionally will show you adds, headlines and images to try and manipulate you to take their next desired action, whether that's to subscribe or buy or share or ask or whatever action they deem valuable - they are absolutely doing this, and will continue to do so. It's not a conspiracy, but reality. This was actually one of the sub-topics of the keynote speaker at this year's Game Developer's Conference. The data being collected on us & our behaviors and how that's being used or likely to be used is staggering.
That bothers me for whatever reason...Does anyone else share my concern(s)?
Yes, and yet no. This is the world we live in. To engage with technology - and by extension, modern society - is to accept the fact that your activity is being recorded in a database somewhere and used for private purpose/gain. The only real way around it is to go live on a communal ranch or some such group somewhere and not leave - no mobile phones and no internet - and that has it's own risks and limitations. To be clear, I'm not poking fun at trying to go off-grid as much as possible, but I will say that for most people it will be too little/too late. For folks that want data on you, they by and large already have it - particularly Apple, Facebook, and Google. As for the government, they have or can get all the data they'd ever want on you.
So do I like all of that? Not really. But I also know and accept that if someone wants information on me, they can get it. It doesn't matter what I do to protect it, online or off. Instead of fighting against it, I've simply accepted it as a part of society. The fact is I was always going to - and have always been - buying those groceries and go to that party and see that doctor and drive that route to work, and other companies and government agencies have been observing me doing so for decades. The only difference is now they're cataloging that data and aggregating/querying it. The only way to not allow them to do that is to not do what I was going to do in the first place, and those aren't realistic options for me.
This is the way of things now. Everything you do is or will be distilled into a queryable interaction and will be used for private or government purposes.
As for the concept of unplugging for a bit in order to focus on face-to-face interactions, that's part of the reason I love social poker and board games. I get to hang out w/my friends, play some games, enjoy some face time, get my head out of a monitor, and slow things down a little. Part of the reason I love the beach, too - unwind with some friends and a nice cigar...good stuff.
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