Privacy is quickly becoming the defining issue of our Age. I was recently interviewed on the Tearsheet Podcast discussing the pivotal role Mezu is playing in protecting payment privacy and how Mezu gives our users choice in the ways they pay.
During the interview, Zach Miller and I discussed how, “the biggest problem of our time is privacy.”
BUT – you may ask – aren’t the really big issues of our time climate change, extremism, trade wars, migration, hunger, eradication of disease?
And my answer is yes.
And no…
Why no? Because ALL these issues are purely man-made and our ability to address them is purely political.
The challenge is that if democracies cannot count on their election processes because bad actors are exploitation our naivete using technology and unknowingly sharing our PIP (personal intellectual proprty) with our very own Big Tech companies who actually not only do not respect our privacy, but actually profit from using the lack of it – then we lose the power and have no path to truly affecting change. So there is a direct line of site between the ability to solve all those major issues and our lack of concern (to date) with the data accumulated by Big Tech to offer us something for ‘free”. There is a direct line from those global issues of PRIVACY toi the heart of our ability to affect fair and trustworthy change.
So is Privacy the biggest issue of our time? It is if you want to live in a reliably democratic society.
“People’s personal intellectual property, i.e. everything that you’ve accumulated throughout your life, details of who you are, what you do, what you’re interested — all these things have become commoditized and commercialized and the system doesn’t truly secure people’s agreement to share them commercially.”
Touching on the hot topic of emerging privacy awareness, the critical role Mezu is playing in a cashless society and why I’m an “Anti-Venmo” type of guy, I was thrilled to jump on the latest Tearsheet Podcast!
Be sure to check out the full interview, and shoot me a tweet with your thoughts. I’d love to keep the conversation going!
— Yuval
