I was reading the feature list for Fedora Core 8 when I discovered that there would be a shift toward an "online desktop". Apparently it's been decided that the future of the desktop is web-centric applications. While I understand the appeal of this paradigm, I think it's dangerous and undesirable for many reasons.

First off, the fundamental principal of Big Board is flawed. The page describing Big Board states the following:

When a user logs into their Desktop for the first time they are greeted with almost a completely empty space. There are a few items hanging around, but we don't give any clues to help people get started.

An interesting perspective exercises is to look at our desktop as if it were a web page. Would you build a web application with the layout of our desktop? Mostly empty space, drop down items for tools to get you started? Probably not.

Why is this flawed? Well first of all comparing a web application to a desktop is just plain silly. Why not compare a desktop application to a web application? Quite frankly, the first thing I do when installing an OS is clean up the desktop. I turn off desktop icons, cut the number of panels to one, and then trim the contents of that panel down to the minimum. The last thing I want is a bunch of social networking site crap cluttering up my desktop (and social networking appears to be the current focus for Big Board and Mugshot). I can understand that Red Hat wants to push Mugshot. And I also know that Microsoft is trying the same tack with "Windows Live". The key difference here is that Microsoft are known to be assholes with only their own best interest in mind. I expect more from Red Hat.

User experience aside, there's a real and serious concern over privacy. This push to put your entire life online is perhaps the most ill-conceived trend in civilized history. Granted things aren't quite like they were in Victorian days when all but the most genteel of personal details were kept to oneself, but I hardly think that putting everything online is a wise choice. Are you absolutely certain you want strangers to be able to Google your wife's menstrual cycle? I'm not. And we don't even use the rhythm method (there, now you know).

There's a disturbing trend in both the willingness of people to volunteer their personal information to web sites and the ability of search engines to harvest that information.

I know that most people think that the stuff they reveal online is harmless and who cares if anyone knows. Of course, any single fact you might consider would probably seem harmless in its own right. But now take two or three or a dozen or a thousand of these seemingly innocuous facts and start combining them into a picture. You were searching for what book? What's your opinion about the war? You voted for who? Next consider how much can be gleaned and inferred about anything given a large enough database (last.fm applies this technique to music with amazing effect). You might think that you are so unique that no realistic picture of you could be gleaned from a heap of factoids. Of course you are dead wrong. Even if you weren't wrong, the problem is that anyone analyzing that data wouldn't care if they were wrong or not: they'd believe they had drawn an accurate enough picture of you and that picture would be who you are to them. And if them is the FBI, the NSA, your bank, a credit agency, your boss or anyone else who might be able to have some real impact on your life, then quite frankly you are screwed (or if you place your hopes in lottery-scale odds, insanely lucky).

Welcome to the world wide web. "Web" appears to be evolving into a far more appropriate term than anyone could have expected.

Here's my suggestion: pretend that every bit of your personal information is likely to indict you for a felony and treat it accordingly. Reject the notion that the convenience of having your information available at any given moment from any internet-connected device is worth the huge sacrifice in privacy you must undertake to obtain it.