Despite our love of free stuff and a bargain, nothing comes without a cost. Take Facebook, Google, YouTube and most other big-hitting platforms on the web. Our lives have been changed by their appearance on the virtual landscape, and it really feels - to the many - that their gift to us is a free gift. That perception, mark my words, will change, and perhaps quite dramatically.
We seem to have traded that feeling of (commercial) freedom for a horrific intrusion that is going on quietly in the code, deep within servers far away from your immediate on-screen experience. At MacDonalds, in the real world, at least you know you're trading fast food and heart disease for hard-earned (but admittedly made-up) cash over the counter. Yet, when it comes to the service providers of the digital age and their apparently free ("and always will be") offerings, the cost to you is not free, just cash-free.
This sleight of mind is beautifully illustrated in Adam's video here:
Maybe this intrusion is better known than I assume, what with my prolific posting and disregard for my personal information. Those more careful than me are perhaps at the centre of the heat that Facebook are feeling, in this Independent piece: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-posts-becoming-less-personal-as-site-looks-to-encourage-people-to-post-about-their-lives-a6976551.html?cmpid=facebook-post
Whatever the level of fear and cynicism, something's afoot and the sense of benign and empowering philanthropy that the web giants are trading on is coming into sharper focus.
Do we ask for tougher policing and control of these friendly-faced and fun-loving monsters? Or do we draw millions of smaller lines around them in the form of new, de-centralised and commonly-owned platforms that reveal the monolithic intentions of profit-seeking, marketing database-building corporations. Those that are free to use and costly to encourage.
Or do we realise that there's still no such thing as a free lunch, or web service. All exchanges carry a cost. It's our addiction and perversion around money that drives us to want a bragain and kid ourselves that we got the better of the other in the deal. It's not a freebie we should be searching for. It's a new way of relating and trading that awaits us. And in finding it, maybe the massive marketing-led interests that currently augment our social and commercial realities will wither and die on the vine?