Silicon Valley technologies and the fact that 'privacy just isn't what it used to be'

siliconvalley.com

Link to June 26 San Jose Mercury News article, "How Facebook has changed our idea of 'too much information'".

Excerpt:    With Facebook at the forefront, social networking companies with business models hungry for personal data and a youthful generation raised on the Internet seem to be pulling the 21st century toward a more "transparent" culture, in the approving words of Mark Zuckerberg, the social networking giant's 26-year-old founder. Facebook's stated mission: "Giving people the power to share and make the world more open and connected." In other words, letting more people know more about each other.

This comes as long-standing social mores and sensibilities are being shaken by the convergence of Silicon Valley technologies. Besides Facebook, which is based in Palo Alto, sites such as Twitter and YouTube are encouraging hundreds of millions of people to share information and images. Gadgets developed here, from the PC to the iPad, have made it simple for users to create, communicate and access that vast amount of digital data. And Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others have made it easier to find all of that information.