What is the best way to hide a tree? The latest hare-brained scheme to be put forward by the Federal government is its proposed Data Retention Regime to be modelled on the European Union’s (EU) Data Retention Directive (PDF 85KB). The proposed directive will require companies providing Internet access to log all activity. That is the web sites you visit, the contents of your emails, your instant message and VoIP conversations, your posts and what you upload and download. This takes invasion of privacy to a whole new level.

One of the great advantages of democracies is its ability to accommodate a plurality of ideas. From the many ideas, a consensus forms as to which will benefit the community the most. This has seen democracies flourish while those countries that only allow one idea to prevail, as common in dictatorships, flounder and stagnate. Web 2.0 technologies have the potential to move democracies away from a plurality of ideas to small communities that cater for only one.

Within the next ten years, information and jobs will find us instead of the other way around as a result of a sharing and collaborating world.

The next ten years will be the sharing and collaborating years. The way we work, play and interact is changing rapidly along lines of connecting to others, sharing ourselves, collaborating with others and creating together.

As predicted by many, the ultra top-secret blacklist of banned websites maintained by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA)* has been leaked. If you link to one of the banned websites, you can be fined $11,000 per day that the link is in place. Although, how you would know that you are linking to a banned site that is contained on a secret list is anyone’s guess.