Something uncanny happened this Sunday. As we were shuffling out the door, we looked at my phone’s notification screen. It was telling us how long the drive would be to Norwalk, Conn., based on the current traffic.
Gadget geeks will recognize this as part of iPhone’s “frequent location service.” Norwalk is where we go to church. That phone has traveled to Norwalk all but one of the Sunday mornings of its activated existence. It just so happened that I was worrying about whether we would be late when the notification popped up. For that reason, it was welcome. But that welcoming feeling — part of a pattern of social engineering perpetuated by technology — also troubled me.
via How Apple and Google could soon dominate the culture war – The Week.
