To understand whether we would really benefit from the world that Zuckerberg paints for us, let's imagine a world where nearly every service and website we use is publicly trackable back to us.
Envision the near future, where advertising companies troll the web to find all traces of your online life. They find your facebook profile (with publicly available profile information and friend lists). Next, a Google search reveals the news stories online that you've visited and commented on, which pieces together your personal and political preferences. A search of public troubleshooting forums reveals what technology you own (and what you might likely buy). Your streaming radio preferences are recorded; you public Amazon wishlist downloaded; even your credit report could be added to make a comprehensive view of what might be within your budget.
It's easy to imagine how advertisers will use this information, but will it only be advertisers who make use of it? It could easily be a prospective employer who pays a company to get a "true" profile of a top-10 interviewee. Or, it could be your bank that is looking to make a judgment call on your mortgage; or, an online stalker who is obsessed with finding every piece of information about you, and can now do so with ease.
Facebook envisions a world where all personal information is available for enterprising companies to make money from. This is already a reality on Facebook.com itself, where all you have to do is take a "free" quiz for your "private" information to be available to fly-by-night companies who have no qualms violating privacy policies.
Is Facebook's vision also America's vision, as Zuckerberg implies? Or, is private enterprise taking advantage of lax security and privacy rules to profit on an ignorant American public?
