Shoshana Zuboff

Dense. The premise is that Google and Facebook are collecting data about everything people do and in many ways without their knowledge. They then sell this information to advertisers which then get people to behave in certain ways. Facebook has done experiments where they place particular items in people's feed -- your friend has voted -- and then have measured how likely that is to get you to vote. And she references instances of the Google and Facebook lying about what their code does, dragging their feet in response public inquiries, etc. She ties it together with similar historical eras -- the gilded age -- and scientific philosophies -- BF Skinner's behaviorism. To me, what was new and alarming is the closed loop -- ultimately the data being collected is used to change people's behavior -- buy something, read something, stay on a website, etc. All without any regulation or over site by democratic institutions. All in all a grim view of what the future will bring.… (més)