Interesting words of Nicholas Carr, writer and former executive editor of Harvard Business Review. In short: increasing centralisation of data will eventually transform into one single computer system, thus eliminating privacy. Most people already have done the step from desktop to 'cloud' computing by using web services like Flickr and G[oogle]mail instead of desktop programs. He stresses that sensitive information of people - and companies - more and more goes into centralized systems, thus exposing more and more data to data-mining and surveillance. Eventually the collection of data is a basis for manipulating people with the help of the computer.

It's the (somewhat misinterpreted) remark about HAL, the computer of '2001 - a space odyssey' and the scary idea of people acting like computers that made me sceptic. '2001' is not a movie about the victory of technology over human beings, it's just the opposite. Man, at the peak of his technical intelligence, again becomes a murderer, thus proceeding to the next step of evolution. In fact, the machine - predominant competitor in many things - didn't win.

So I think the web won't win either. We're not just feeding our computers with our intelligence - we're feeding the web with a lot of crap, with porn, with good and bad web sites, with SPAM and everything you might think about. Does this make us dependent on all that?

Sure, we're at risk. But the risks and their reasons are manifold, it's not just because of a big system eating more and more data. And then, man is behaving bad: to all intents and purposes we're still the creatures at the beginning of '2001': ready to kill if somebody is threatening us. This is a strong power, we should not forget this.