Suddenly, We’re Ubiquitous

As photos flood the Web and photo recognition technology becomes more widespread and precise, are we approaching an unsettling tipping point?

One day you may wake up and there will be thousands of photos of you, which you didn’t know existed, available to anyone with just a few keystrokes.

Now, what does that possibility mean for you?

I started writing this piece 5 years ago in 2008, when I’d been thinking about the wealth of photography flooding the web, as well as the emerging facial recognition technology. Returning to the subject now in 2013, these thoughts seem at once less novel, but all the more relevant: As we immerse ourselves more deeply online, as we share ourselves more willingly, as technology evolves, which allows us both to create content anywhere we go, at any time, and to recognize patterns (and specifically people) in data, we’re approaching some sort of tipping point in which much about ourselves, which we thought private is suddenly going to become public. We may be approaching a point where content about us we didn’t even know existed is suddenly, easily available on the web. Suddenly, we will be ubiquitous.

What do I mean?