bwrich wrote:

The killer app that everyone will want is increased longevity. There are efforts to bolster patients' privacy now, but when the ability to tailor effective medical treatments to you based on your genome, your genome will be the first thing you will want to reveal.

It's not even your genetic data that will help here. As it stands now, HIPAA is a huge barrier to getting the broken health care system in the US to actually work. It was meant to protect patients privacy, but its unintended consequence is that it makes it prohibitively expensive and risky to exchange much needed data. You don't need genetics to improve longevity or costs. You need basic information like prescriptions and immunizations. Things that are very difficult to follow you around because of this law.

Over the next few years, you can kiss this kind of stuff goodbye. It's becoming too risky and too expensive for us to "protect" privacy. The more data liquidity we have, the more efficient things can become. And with that, comes mashups of that data which could yield unprecedented innovation and development. Yes, I'm saying the glass is half full.

RE: Data is the new Singularity | Internet anonymity endangered by UN agency project