Wikipedia founder says 'Internet will change perception of privacy'

London, Apr 17 (ANI): Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has said that the Internet will change 'perceptions of privacy', and added that employers will have to end the 'hypocrisy' of refusing to hire people who post embarassing photos on social networking sites.

Wales, in a YouTube interview for the New Thinkers Index, argued that employers needed to understand that a photo of somebody 'drunk in college' online was not necessarily embarrassing.

He echoed thoughts of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, who argued that young people think about their online privacy in a fundamentally different way from older generations.

Presenting five predictions for the future of technology, Wales also said that he would be "suspicious" of any attempts to work out global laws covering the Internet.

"It's very unlikely that we're going to get some sort of global governance," The Telegraph quoted Wales, as saying.

"And I'm not really sure I would trust a process between the world's leaders that's going to hammer out a new law for the internet," he added.

He said over time the Internet is likely to become an even larger "public force", with politicians increasingly forced to take notice of the collective opinions of web users.

Wales emphasised that the future of the web would be shaped by new users from the developing world, and predicted that the media was likely to retain its existing mixture of paid-for and free online content. (ANI)