Google’s chief says privacy is dying. But does the Facebook generation care?

“Google boss Eric Schmidt warned this week that when they grow up, many young people are going to want to change their names, so desperate will they be to dissociate themselves from the trail of personal revelations they are casually leaving behind them on the web. It is ironic that the same digital culture that is accused of shortening attention spans is keeping our past selves alive and present for much longer than the analogue, biological world ever could. We are hurling thousands of digital boomerangs out into cyberspace, not realising that, it might take years, but they will return. This willing surrender of privacy seems shocking to many. But what is so wrong with this data promiscuity?”

Article in yesterday’s Independent