![]() ![]() Google drove into our neighborhoods with camera-equipped cars to capture images of our communities and create detailed maps that will be useful for routing their self-driving cars and even planning entire cities where everything will be connected and everyone’s life experience moment by moment can be rendered as data. That Fitbit your employer paid for? It feeds information to insurers that can use to change your behavior and reduce costs – or charge you more if you don’t comply. You’re not the product, you’re the site of raw material extraction, and that extraction isn’t just to sell ads, it’s to provide the means of control to anyone who will profit from it. ![]() The old saw about free platforms – if it’s free, you’re the product – isn’t quite true. The more engaged we are online, the more these companies know about us, and the more they know, the more they can sell predictions of our behavior for people who want to modify it. What started as search and social platforms without much of a business model were transformed by the accidental discovery that the data trails we leave behind whenever we go online – “behavioral surplus” – is extraordinarily valuable. It’s an impressive work that ties together a lot of trends into a very spooky picture of where we are headed when intimate data about each of us is used as the raw material for prediction and control. I have finally finished reading Shoshana Zuboff’s epic book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. ![]()
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