“Data is the new oil”#

The modern world 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, people produce data all the time. People produce data about almost everything: purchasing habits, friendship groups, political and ideological leanings, embarrassing secrets, travel history, browsing history etc. The list is endless. All this data is being scooped up by devices and apps that have been made suspiciously easily to access. And often free.

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

  • The more deeply they can know you in a way that you don’t even know yourself (do you know every location you visited in the last year and who was around you at the time?)
  • The better they can create products that provide an irresistible experience that anticipates your actions before you have even had an opportunity to think for yourself.
  • The more valuable that data becomes to those in high places who may wish to monitor/modify/control their subjects’ behavioural patterns.

Crowdsourcing centralised power is not a good idea.

The overall point of this section is 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:

" Google has pioneered a whole new type of business transaction. Instead of paying for Google’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… "

The following sections explore this idea further.

The Cloud#

It is no small convenience having all of your data automatically synchronised to all your devices and available almost anywhere in the world. But how is all this convenience possible?

Simply put:

The cloud is just some guy's computer.

Although using the cloud provides the significant convenience of synchronised data across multiple devices, your devices are not the only computers with access to your data. The cloud is literally nothing more than just a series of computers connected to the internet that are owned by strangers. Granted, these strangers often work for well established tech companies, but they are strangers nonetheless.

Since when was it good practice to store your belongings with strangers?

It has become extremely commonplace for people to store their private data with strangers. Why? Beyond the obvious answer of the convenience, most users do not feel the presence of the strangers with whom they are sharing their lives. Consider how the average person uses their phone in public. They likely shield their screen from random passers by. Perhaps they use a so-called “privacy-screen”. All of these are attempts to keep strangers out. And yet, countless strangers have full access through the cloud.

Mr Software and his invisibility cloak strike again.

In the book Permanent Record, American whistleblower (and serious expert on this topic), 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. But for now, just know, in no uncertain terms:

You are being spied on and manipulated. You are being groomed into not caring.

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. Not to mention 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? Note that these are moments when Mr Software’s invisibility cloak malfunctions and you can get a good look at him. Do not ignore what you see.

Stop defaulting to the cloud.

Always-online#

In this data-hungry world, tech companies 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 who coined 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 discussed in an earlier section.

Chief above all addiction-optimised products is social media.

Many instinctively know that social media is a net negative. And yet, many just cannot stop using it.

Why can’t you stop? Pleasure engineering.

  • Instagram is not your friend.
  • Snapchat is not your friend.
  • TikTok is not your friend.
  • Facebook is not your friend.
  • Twitch is not your friend (and nor are the streamers).
  • Netflix is not your friend.
  • Spotify is not your friend.

There are of course some legitimate reasons to use some of the above, even if it’s just for leisure. 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. Whichever online platform you use, beware of these systems that are desperate to keep you endlessly stimulated.

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:

  • The destruction of your attention span
  • The normalisation of a constant intake of information controlled by an external entity
  • The subtle deferring of all your decisions to an algorithm, controlled by an external entity
  • The harming of your self image / self esteem
  • The suppression of your individuality
  • The stunting of your creativity
  • The constant cultivating of impulsive behaviour
  • The relentless exposure to sexualised and pornographic media
  • The silent redirecting of your hopes and dreams
  • The disassociation of yourself from the physical world
  • The admitting of endless external influences into your home
  • The transferring of parental control into the hands of strangers (i.e. fast-tracked grooming)
  • The neglecting of your children’s most innocent and formative years

Insidious. Each of the above points is worth its own section. And the list is endless.

Tech companies do not care about any damage inflicted upon you in their pursuit of personal data.

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 the 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.”

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.”

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, teaching a person to read can cause harm if one is only taught to the level that leaves them defenceless.

Modifying Sayers’ quote to extend its principle to the modern day, one could say:

“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.”

And modifying the second quote also:

“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…”

The internet is a war zone and many people are not well equipped to defend themselves. Worse still, children are carelessly thrown onto this battlefield and somehow expected to fend for themselves.

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


SUBDUE.