As an iPhone user, I’ve been interested in the iPhone tracking controversy, but I haven’t been that surprised that it was creating such a file, nor that the company has been churlish in its response. I have a lot of respect for Apple, and every computer I’ve bought myself has been a Mac, but I don’t think of myself as a big fan of the company: my feeling about it follow Lionel Mandrake’s feelings about the Japanese: “The thing is, they make such bloody good cameras.” (If you haven’t seen Dr. Strangelove, it’s time.) I know people who work there, and they’re great folks, but the organization itself seems to love the concept of users, but not necessarily the actual reality of customers.

Anyway, this post on Buad Attitude summed up my feelings about the tracking files:

My iPhone is tracking me (and it turns out I’m really boring)… all the data I have on me says that I spend a lot of time in Eugene and Portland and have gone to the coast once.

Seriously, I haven’t even been to freakin’ Seattle in the last 8 months, much less anywhere exotic.

I’m so depressed.

This is why I gave up Foursquare and Last.fm, and other services that automatically broadcast where you are, what you’re listening to, etc.: not because I was worried about Big Brother, but because I didn’t feel like other people would get anything out of such a fine-grained yet decontextualized view of my life. I’ll be imposing on friends to read book chapters before too long; I don’t want to waste their patience on reading that I’m at the gym, listening to the Moulin Rouge soundtrack. I can be pretty obsessive about tracking my attention, concentration level, what I eat and drink, hunger level, and other things when I feel the need, and even I couldn’t figure out what I would do with this information. Stash it in a file, maybe; but share it with everyone, no.