History feels like it's on fast-forward. In a few generations we've gone from oral traditions to written ones to streaming video that moves faster than I can remember what happened yesterday. I used to take photos to mark special places, people, and events. Now my phone is glued to my hand whenever I'd rather not think too hard about something. Convenience has a price: autocorrect has chipped away at my spelling, I sometimes skip writing whole sentences - my vocabulary and communication have suffered for it. I've uncomfortably called my phone my external hard drive. It’s not far from the truth.
This goes deeper than vanity. In my late teens I learned that to survive, I must chase joy at all costs. …So I document everything (PICS or it DIDN'T HAPPEN! <JOKING/NR EMOJI>) and yet seem to remember about the same, maybe less. Meanwhile, my digital footprint is perpetually outgrowing my ability to manage it. I wonder whether privacy is archaic, and whether the laws meant to protect it will fall short again once artificial intelligence (AI) outpaces those, too.
I'll date myself a little with this: I was a college freshman when Facebook was brand new, a small community open only to people with university email addresses. After logging onto the WWW, we started tossing personal information out the door like old shoes. A short while before I’d called my dad from my first iPhone, amazed: Internet! Email! An address book in the palm of my hand! He was amused. HE had been the proud owner of the first POCKET CALCULATOR in college – one the size of a Steno Pad that clipped to the outside of his pocket.
Our private health information (PHI) may be the last sacred frontier of data privacy. HIPAA, passed in 1996 around the time dial-up was calling for computers in every middle-class home, is best known for keeping your PHI out of employers’ hands and anyone else’s who lacks proper authorization.
Why does that matter now? AI is rapidly rolling out, electronic health records (EHRs) are improving efficiencies with administrative tasks for providers, and without proper oversight and protections, America could be traveling toward 1984 faster than you can say George Orwell!
Entrepreneurs will find opportunity, but the big players with deep pockets have political pull, and they're the ones to watch. Start reading, keep conversations going. And VOTE!
ORIGINAL WORK COPYRIGHTED TO HYPE GIRL MEDIA; REWRITTEN WITH CLAUDE V3.16
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
— George Santayana