This topic hits close to home here. I've been thinking about all of this for all my life. Call me paranoid but my stomch churns when I think about the development of facial recognition technologies. I always tend toward anonymity. Even when I trust people, I choose not to share anything about myself, partly in fear of indexation.

Every time you publish your face on the internet, it crawls its way toward a facial recognition database. Facebook already knows that I exist, and even though I have not published a picture of myself, other people have and they have tagged me against my wishes. Now Facebook can recognise me. If someone publishes a photo, Facebook can even tell me "hey, you're in this photo".

That is the scariest thing for me, and also voice recognition and even speech pattern recognition in writing. It's being developed, but it's not as wild as the other two.

I believe that our current society, as you say, has not only brought itself to this state but it will keep walking in that direction. People shun anonymity. It's hard to say "I won't show you my face or my voice, I won't tell you my name" without reactions such as "then you must have something to hide! What is it?" I just don't have anythign to show! But society tends toward self-surveillance, toward showing faces, places, actions and all.

We have this deep entrenched desire to share our lives and while it might be good for some, in general, it works toward the tendency. What I mean by this is that every time you share something, other people feel acceptance and need in this and they also share, and when everyone is sharing, you're the odd one if you decide not to share. Not sharing is not being part of society. Not taking part in self-surveillance puts you in a different, darker category, and that is sad.