Privacy in a social genomic age
I recently had a long conversation with Veritas Genetics’ Rodrigo Martinez for an episode of The Insight, our podcast on genetics and evolution. One of his major arguments is that we are entering into the age of the social genome.And the numbers don’t …
Dreaming of billions of genomes
In the year 2000 scientists finished the draft of the complete human genome. The “reference” for what came after. Even ten years earlier some researchers were questioning the feasibility of any such project! In the early 1990s, many assumed it would be…
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 13: Is the FBI Watching Your DNA?
The Insight Show Notes — Season 2, Episode 13: Is the FBI Watching Your DNA?This week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Podcasts)we discussed the controversy that has erupted around Family Tree DNA and genetic privacy. We talked to Ju…
The end of the century of privacy
Reading The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living since the Civil War has made me think more about the unique nature of urban civilization of the long 20th-century. The expansion of public health, in particular provision of clean water, meant that for the first time in the history of the […]
The naked years: the end of privacy
I do talk periodically on this weblog about the coming ‘transparent society.’ The main reason I bring up the issue is that I think it is probably inevitable, and, I think we’re sliding toward it without even reflecting on it too much. Many people are very surprised at how little time it takes to find […]
You have no privacy, deal with it
The Washington Post’s blogger-journalist Dave Weigel has a post up where he preemptively apologizes for stuff he posted on an “off-the-record” e-list,. Extracts are going to be published by a gossip site. Journalists are the tip of the iceberg; privacy is fast becoming a total fiction, remember that. We’re slowly drifting toward David Brin’s model […]