February 24 on "Here and Now" — guest Arturs Mednis.

I am quite an active user of the opportunities offered by the internet and computer technology. I follow new developments, study them, and use them. Several years ago, something happened. I wanted to share photos (digital, of course) with my friends from a joint event. I used the service offered by Google Picasa. I was pleased to discover that Google offered the ability to tag people visible in photos, naming them — I eagerly and enthusiastically started browsing through all the photographs, naming everyone visible in them. I was delighted that after just 2-3 photos, Google recognized the person in the image and asked — “Is this Janis?” But at the same time I thought — hmm, what am I actually doing? Of course, it’s nice, friends enjoy it, and so on, but — why does Google need this information? Considering how targeted advertising aimed at specific individuals is created (by collecting information about their interests, habits, and activities) — I started becoming a little suspicious. And what if this information falls into the wrong hands? It’s hard to immediately imagine what consequences might follow, but still. At that point, I stopped tagging faces in photos and deleted the ones I had already tagged. Several years have passed since this incident, and new internet services have appeared, such as Twitter, Foursquare. Draugiem.lv and Facebook have developed further. As a result, people’s lives are increasingly moving online, where they begin to live their own lives. Of course, technologies develop at their own pace, following their own rules, and all these services do provide some, sometimes even tangible, benefit (like my experience with Baltkom), but what is happening also has another side. What impact does this publicizing of one’s life have on the person themselves? How does a person’s life change thanks to new technologies, especially the ability to put some information about oneself out for general, public viewing, commenting, and use? What does all of this really mean? To discuss these questions, I invited someone who calls himself a “new media specialist” — Arturs Mednis. Of course, he can also be found online (Artu.rs or Medn.is). The show — this week just once, late Thursday evening (around 23:15), LTV1. Questions — live by phone. Before the show — right here, in the article comments, or on Twitter.