"Big Mother" is watching you...

I'm thoroughly enjoying reading Ambient Findability, by Peter Morville. I am a huge fan of being able to find things easily, when you need them, and then finding them usable once you get there. The more I read about usability, findability, and the other things that make library (and other) services user-friendly, the less patience I have for things that aren't user friendly.

I'm not sure, however, how I feel about making *people* easily findable. The idea of fitting your young child with a locator while in a theme park (Morville 2005, 80) seems like a terrific idea. However, tracking your teenager with a GPS device as they drive to school, work, and social outings seems a little like spying. I read about this in Morville, and it did make me think about the length I would go to in order to protect/monitor my child.

By odd coincidence, this week I heard Technology Lets Parents Track Kids' Every Move on NPR <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5725196>. This story provides a profile of a family that is actually using this technology.

It just makes me feel old. I generally think that I am a technophile. Then, I hear a story like this, and I hear myself saying things like "back in my day..."

Such parental tracking brings up all sorts of issues about trust, independence, privacy, psychology, and security in our modern society. It also makes me feel paranoid, even though Morville warns against it at this point (2005, 74).

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