The age of 'instantiality' is here

We are living in an age of ‘instantiality.’ Don’t bother looking up the word, it doesn’t exist, I just made it up. The Insider is grappling with an overload of sickening images and news of human tragedy that has been transmitted from Japan constantly and seconds after the big quake struck. It has been a week of ‘instant and constant reality’ via every form of communication we have at our disposal.

We have all starting becoming used to the ‘instantiality’ world we live in, and the telecommunications industry is the very beating heart of it all. It has helped us experience the worst mankind has to endure but it has also driven home the realization that governments and security agencies cannot continue to hoodwink us with the ‘official line.’

When we all saw the roof blow off a nuclear reactor and then saw another catch fire we knew something was terribly wrong and we immediately doubted the ‘it’s nothing to be concerned about’ stories the power plant operators and government authorities were spreading. The almost total lack of contingency planning for such a critical operation is daunting - “we weren’t expecting such a big quake and hadn’t planned for it, we didn’t expect to lose power to the pumps feeding cooling water to the reactor and it’s next to the sea because we need lots of water to keep it cool.”

The Insider can hardly wait for the WikiLeaks account of what has really happened this last week. We have gotten used to instant reality and are demanding more openness from authorities now that some of the hypocrisies have been exposed. However, it will all come at a price - our own privacy.

Whilst we were glued to our screens, a federal judge in the USA granted the government access to the Twitter accounts of three of WikiLeaks’ most prominent supporters. Mashable.com reported that Judge Theresa Buchanan rejected the arguments of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union and attorneys representing the WikiLeaks backers, declaring that first and fourth amendment rights would not be violated by turning over Twitter account information to the government.

Forensic fraud experts attending a conference in Bangkok last week told The Insider that almost everything anyone has ever done on their computer can later be extracted, and that connections on Facebook and Twitter, plus searches on Google, can offer vital information on a suspect’s activities. Subpoenas, such as that forcing Twitter to divulge information, are common and can provide damning evidence that the alleged party probably thought would never come to light.

When CSPs talk about enhancing customer experience, by gathering useful information on  a customer’s activities, they may also be providing a fantastic service to anybody else that demands access to it through the courts or other means, in future.

The Generation X and Y’s that live in a constant state of ‘instantiality’ may have some regrets in that same future. A bit like getting a tattoo late one Saturday night after a few beers - it seemed like ‘a good idea at the time.’ Or nuclear power station operators thinking outdated safety measures were ‘adequate at the time.’

For CSPs amassing data on customers now, then discovering later that others would like access it for whatever means. What seems like a ‘good business case’ today may prove to be ‘major legal case’ in the future?