Courtesy of OSWeekly.com

Entering the Sci-Fi Mode. If a lot of this strikes you as a little too "2001 - A Space Odyssey," that would be because of the power that is being described to a single machine. In many Sci-Fi movies, we have seen the power and the danger of computers gone mad.

But back on Earth, would a more likely danger be something a bit more grounded? Instead of AI gone mad, maybe it might be just a single company that has the power to control all of that information that the OS described above has learned about you?

Consider what it would be like if you discovered that all of the daily work habits that you "taught" your PC were somehow stolen from a company who was using it for marketing research. Seriously, look at all of the privacy problems that AOL has been plagued with lately. They're not a malicious company really; they're just amazingly naive with your data.

So before too many of us become overly excited about the prospect of having a PC that totally anticipate our every whim, we ought to consider the consequences of such ability. I don't think there is any question whatsoever that enjoying the fruits of tomorrow's coders will be something truly amazing. However, nothing in life is free. And this includes the right to privacy with our operating systems.

When I first thought of this topic for discussion, I was all but convinced that having an operating system that could do much of my thinking for me was the way to go. But when we turn over that much control over to a glorified toaster, we are simply screaming someone to come along and help themselves to that kind of access. Seriously, can you imagine the type of spyware that could match this? Yeah, that would most certainly keep me up at night, too.