Yes, I agree completely that even very technical people often have a surprising blind spot, thinking either we can put the database/facial recognition/cheap cameras genie back in the bottle, or alternately that leaving no digital trace is a Good Idea for the mainstream.
One good thing Facebook has done is demonstrate that most people (arguably with a lot of unethical shifting of visibility preferences) are happy to live portions of their life in public. These people are not sheep, they're happy sharing portions of their identities.
If only we had more nuanced, robust, personally controlled identity infrastructure. Much harder to achieve with Facebook owning a rudimentary, simplistic but very large subset of the social graph.
One good thing Facebook has done is demonstrate that most people (arguably with a lot of unethical shifting of visibility preferences) are happy to live portions of their life in public. These people are not sheep, they're happy sharing portions of their identities.
If only we had more nuanced, robust, personally controlled identity infrastructure. Much harder to achieve with Facebook owning a rudimentary, simplistic but very large subset of the social graph.