Tim Maly's article on Co.DESIGN, "One Day Soon, Could Our Phones Anticipate Our Desires, Like A Psychic Butler?", talks about Itai Miller's innovative concept app (which he created for a class project) called Opportune. The ultimate idea behind Opportune is to act as a, well, butler of sorts. The app looks through your history, searches, favorites, and dislikes on all the websites you are a part of, and is able to turn it around to help you find people and places before you actually tell the phone you need them. An example the article gives, for example, is a struggling actor is looking for work, and a producer is looking for someone to help act in a pilot series, and both happen to cross paths around the same area frequently. The app would alert each other of the other's existence so they could meet up, without the actor having to search directly for 'producers/directors in the area looking to hire actors' while they were in the same place.
It's an interesting idea for an app, and would definitely have its advantages if it worked like they suggest it could, but I wonder if people who would buy this app would understand just how much of a breach of privacy it is. Anyone who would have the app would automatically put all its trust into this app (not that we already don't with some already, but this takes it to a whole new level) and would have to hope no one is using it to stalk them, or to take information from them, or anything else. It basically gives both the app and everyone else who has the app who lives in the same general area permission to break into your entire social media and search history, and find out who exactly you are, and that scares the daylights out of me.
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