A.Greenfield Questions - Answers

• Will the average citizen of a developed nation in 2025 enjoy an enhanced sense of personal freedom as a result of information processing in everyday life?
  

• How about the reality of personal freedom, as opposed to that person's subjective assessment?
  

• And how about the average citizen of a less developed nation?
  

By the year of 2025 the average citizen of a developed nation will definitely be enjoying new ways of personal freedom. This enhanced freedom will mainly be available due to the various technological breakthroughs, innovations and implementations of new ways of processing information of any kind in everyday life. The availability and processing of information will be embedded in the everyday life of the future citizen in many ways, thus creating a true ubiquitous computing era.

Areas in which ubiquitous computing could eventually improve the sense of personal freedom, in the future, would be in the everyday communication of the citizens, either for pleasure or business purposes, through enhanced secure communication among interlinked devices and also in the way that citizens will receive most of their daily information load which will come through a truly universal broadband network connection connected to a new sophisticated grid of terminals. Other areas where ubiquitous computing could provide a sense of personal freedom would be through the new technologically sophisticated entertainment and other household devices where the user could find all possible ways of amusement without getting out of his house, thus feeling a sense of freedom to experience new activities that he would otherwise not do.

As far as the reality of all this believed personal freedom that the future citizen will enjoy is concerned, there are many factors hindering that reality.

One of the main and most important factors is the increasing concern about the privacy of the citizen in the future society. The increased penetration of ubiquitous computing in the households would enable the collection of much more information from people’s homes. The introduction of standardized IDs with embedded modern RFID chips in combination with the extensive use of gateways for reading the chips would make it possible for various private or governmental agencies to track the behavior of all citizens. Although governments will obviously regulate many privacy issues, the fact that agencies would have the capacity to monitor and store personal information will definitely threaten and possibly encumber the reality of personal freedom in the future.

Another important reason that could possibly obstruct the reality of personal freedom is the easiness with which citizens will have access to all kinds of information. The apparent benefit of having any kind of information at your desire hides more risks than it seems. People are tempted to think less about the correctness of the answers they find on the web and leave the critical thinking behind. This could potentially restrict their “freedom” of choosing the right information and being able to make critical judgments.

In the nations that will be less developed at that point in time the average citizen will, most probably, not feel the need for ubiquitous computing so much as a citizen in a more developed country. This will be the case because there will be other needs that need to be solved first before ubiquitous computing can assist those citizens with increasing their quality of life in terms of information availability an processing. The high class citizens will most probably enjoy a sense of personal freedom in terms of information processing in those countries, but this high class is only a very small percentage of the overall population in developed countries.