Your Data and Your Attention

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“Data is the new oil”

You may have heard this statement before - and I agree with it. The world as we know it is upheld by computer networks - and these networks run on data. Your data. Our data. Crowdsourced data, essentially.

As has been established in previous sections, we produce data all the time. We produce data about almost everything. Our purchasing habits; our friends; our political and ideological leanings; our secrets; our travel history; our browsing history. The list is endless. All this data is being scooped up by apps that have been made suspiciously easily available to us.

For Big Tech, more data = more money and more control. More specifically, the more data they have on you:

If you weren’t aware, power almost invariably corrupts1. Crowdsourcing centralised power is not a good idea.

Perhaps I will flesh all this out further in the future, but for now, know this: Big Tech is acutely aware of the extreme value of your personal data and their entire industry depends upon you carelessly throwing it away.

As author Yasha Levine said in his book, Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet, speaking about a particularly famous Big Tech company:

“[Big Tech Company] has pioneered a whole new type of business transaction. Instead of paying for [Big Tech Company]’s services with money, people pay with their data. And the services it offers to consumers are just the lures – used to to grab people’s data and dominate their attention…”

Let’s flesh this idea out some more.

The Cloud ™

“Cloud storage” this, “cloud storage” that. How could we ever live without the cloud? All your photos, videos, documents, spreadsheets, notes, all of it accessible from any device and at a moment’s notice. How is all this convenience possible?

As is it said in my corner of the internet:

The cloud is just some guy’s computer

The cloud is literally just some guy’s computer that is accessible over the internet. If you use the cloud, then once you take a picture (or create any data) on your phone, it is automatically sent through the internet to some other guy’s computer. Then, to make the picture available to you on a different device, the ‘other guy’ simply sends his copy over to that device.2

Why are you copying all your personal files to some other guy’s computer? You hide your camera roll in public. Perhaps you’ve even bought a privacy screen. But you don’t care about this? Why? Is it because you can’t physically see this ‘other guy’ on whose computer your files are stored? Is it because all this copying of your files happens silently? Invisibly, even?

Mr Software and his invisible cloak strikes again.

“But I’m not trusting random strangers with my data. I’m trusting corporations that are held accountable!”. To your first sentence, yes you are, actually. And to your second, oh dear.

In his book Permanent Record, American whistleblower, Edward Snowden, shared his feelings on people’s acceptance of cloud storage:

“I was amazed at how willingly people were signing up, so excited at the prospect of their photos and videos and music and e-books being universally backed up and available that they never gave much thought as to why such an uber-sophisticated and convenient storage solution was being offered to them for “free” or for “cheap” in the first place.”

Want to get an idea of what’s being done with your data? Read his book.

By and large, cloud storage is a scam. You are laying your life bare before people who have everything other than your best interests at heart. And let’s not even get into technicalities such as when a cloud storage provider blocked a user and deleted all their files, or when previously “deleted” photos started reappearing on some iCloud users devices?3 Didn’t hear about that? Look it up. Note that these are moments when Mr Software’s invisibility cloak malfunctions and we get a good look at him. Do not ignore what you see.

Stop defaulting to the cloud.

Let us remind ourselves of the end of Yasha Levine’s quote and then move onto the next section:

“… the services it [Big Tech Company] offers to consumers are just the lures – used to to grab people’s data and dominate their attention…”

Always-online culture

In this data-hungry world we all live in, corporations are now simply making anything that will ensure that the stream of data flow from your private space and into their data centres remains uninterrupted - that is to say, they are making anything that will keep you online. To achieve this, they create products that are optimised for addiction, ensuring that your attention is always captured.

David Courtwright, author of “The Age of Addiction”—and from whom I first heard the brilliant term “pleasure engineering”—said it best:

“For every individual attempting to exercise self-control over computer use… there are a thousand experts on the other side of the screen whose job it is to break it down.”

Please take some time to understand how fundamental this fact is to your online experience. And do not forget the definition of a computer

To my eye, the supreme addiction-optimised product of our day is social media (so called).

I sense people know instinctively that social media is a net negative for us all. And yet, people just cannot stop using it. People just can’t stop scrolling. So much so, that I’ve learnt there’s a term for this: doomscrolling. Although I think this term specifically refers to the endless scrolling through negative news on social media, nonetheless, the term is helpful for describing this new pervasive, unending practice of compulsive scrolling of any type. Negative news or otherwise, we both know all that scrolling is bad for you.

Why can’t you stop? Pleasure engineering.

There are of course some legitimate reasons to use some of the above, even if it’s just for leisure. In fact, I use some of the above (kind of, though definitely not TikTok). Perhaps not everything in the above list is technically classed as social media, but what must be understood is that the game is rigged towards making you a victim of pleasure engineering. A victim with no control over impulse, with no free time to think. Busy being engaged and studied. For any online platform, beware of these systems that are desperate to keep you endlessly stimulated4.

Secondary effects

In the midst of all this careless pleasure engineering, a whole host of secondary effects are born out of excessive social media / internet use:

Insidious. Downright misanthropic, if you ask me. Each of the above points is worth its own section. And the list is endless. Rest assured, Big Tech could not care less about any of the harm these secondary effects cause. So long as you’re creating data!

Won’t somebody please think of the children?!

Dorothy Sayers, a 20th century author, delivered a speech titled The Lost Tools of Learning (1947) at Oxford University, her alma mater. Although the speech is about her desire for reform in the education system, some of her points are relevant to our current topic of discussion. In her opening, she said:

“For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armour was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word.”

Please take your time with these. She continues:

“By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects.”

Sayers’ is speaking to a bygone era. But that era was, naturally, the precursor to our own. Her point is simple: words are weapons. And many people—children in particular—are not equipped to defend themselves in a world where such weapons are wielded at them “incessantly”. Furthermore (and adding my own slight spin on the wording), teaching a person to read can in fact be considered an act of oppression if one is only taught to the level that leaves them defenseless. Apprehension vs comprehension. Taught the former and not the latter.

Got it? Now let’s apply this to our day. Modifying Sayers’ quote, we could say something like:

“For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armour was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read use smartphones, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word the internet.”

Let’s try the second quote:

“By the invention of the film and the radio internet, we have made certain that no aversion to reading nothing shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words content, content, content. They do not know what the words mean content means; they do not know how to ward them it off or blunt their its edge or fling them it back…”

If you can excuse my butchering of the original quote, a solid point still comes through. The internet is a war zone and many people are not well equipped to defend themselves and, worse still, children are carelessly thrown onto this battlefield and somehow expected to fend for themselves.

I know of a boy who, on his 13th birthday, asked his parents for an Instagram account. Does this boy even know what ‘Instagram’ means? Borrowing Sayers’ language, has he been equipped to “blunt its edge” or to “fling it [content] back”? Of course not. This child is a victim.

I must tread carefully here, particularly as I have no children of my own, but I sincerely think that many parents do not take seriously the weapon that is social media / the internet in general.

“Excuse me but we monitor our child’s social media usage.” Yeah, sure you do.
“Um we enable parental controls on our child’s phone!” Oh, you mean the parental controls made by the same people who created the addiction device in the first place? Right.
“But all of my child’s friends are on social media!” I thought we’re supposed to tell children that peer pressure is bad? Are we not doing that anymore? Got it.

Anything and everything exists on the internet. You are permitting anyone and everyone access to your child’s mind, by way of the one-way mirror that is the phone screen.

Do not forget: software is a person. Would you permit just anyone to approach you/your child and talk to you?

Doomscrolling manchildren

Allow me to tell another story. This one is real this time.

Some time ago, I was on holiday with some good friends and a few distant acquaintances. I spent some decent time with one of these acquaintances in particular and I noticed that he could never stop scrolling social media. Any chance he got, he’d be swiping. His phone speakers blazing, of course, generating the most incoherent stream of sound imaginable: 2 seconds of what sounded like sports highlights; 1.4 seconds of ukulele music; half a second of an ear-piercing, distorted scream (a streamer performing a rage ritual in return for donations, perhaps?); ukulele music again… And so forth, with each one of these audio assaults separated by just a flicker of silence triggered by the swipe of his thumb as he moved from one video to the next.

Then something dawned on me. My emotion switched from frustration to a form of pity. This man is a child. He spends no time with his own thoughts. In those flickers of silence I suddenly couldn’t help but hear the cries of a toddler demanding the next thing. “More! … Boring! … Again!”. Ad nauseam.

I can’t unsee it. Now I’m seeing manchildren everywhere.

Man gets on train and sits down. TikTok, immediately. “Next! Next! Again!” he cries, through every restless swipe of his thumb. Manchild.

I visit a friend’s house. Group conversation dies down momentarily. Guy immediately picks up his phone. Instagram. “Boring! Boring! More!” I can see him saying to himself as I watch the scrolling white light reflect off his glasses. Manchild.

Regrettable.

You can do so much better.

You may need to re-read this chapter.

Your mind is infinitely precious. Guard it.

The odds are so utterly stacked against you. And yet, you can still win.

SUBDUE.

manchild
This you?

>> Next: Closing Complaints

  1. See: All of human history. ↩︎

  2. Technical side note. How is this achieved, technically? Well, there is some software on your phone that will be constantly (or, at a very high rate) looking for new data on your phone. “Any new data? No. Any new data? No. Any new data? No. Any new data? No. Any new data? Yes! Send!” And just like that, before you can react, off your data goes. Software is a person. ↩︎

  3. You need to understand the principle at play here. Software facilitates lies. If “deleted” files reappear, it is because they were never actually deleted. Users were lied to. They were given cute phones with a pretty “delete” button that didn’t truly delete anything. But this doesn’t surprise you anymore, right? ↩︎

  4. Just to get it off my chest: I hate all “influencers”, most content creators are uninspired bots; most livestreamers are con men and their “communities” are parasocial embarrassments; relentless consumption of music/podcasts is making everybody dumb. ↩︎

  5. Oh and before you start vigorously defending your favourite state-sponsored search engine, go and learn about “filter bubbles”. Many such cases. ↩︎