Indecent Exposure

I had a girlfriend in college. I was crazy about her, but I was also a jerk. In October 1985, she dumped me and started seeing somebody else. I freaked out and she stopped talking to me. I didn't get over her for years.

The other day I was wondering where she was and what she was doing. So I typed her name into one of those Internet people-finders and there she was, with an email address at some college in Canada. A few more clicks and I learned that she was a graduate student in the physics department - a big departure from her undergraduate studies. A few more clicks and I had her home address and phone number.

For years the digital avant-garde has been telling the world that "information wants to be free." (A search on HotBot turns up almost 2,000 Web pages containing the phrase "information wants to be free," by the way.) Today we are perilously close to realizing that dream. Fueled by dramatically reduced distribution costs and advertiser support, databases that used to cost thousands of dollars per year to rent are now freely available on the Internet. But while modern technology and new business techniques have dropped the cost, they haven't given us tools to deal effectively with the consequences.