Surveillance Capitalism

There’s an old poker adage - if you can’t work out who the sucker is at the table - you are the sucker.

A more recent twist - ’if you aren’t paying for the product - you are the product.

And now we have … “If you aren’t tracking people you are being tracked. And, if you are being tracked you are essentially a modern day serf.

How Capitalism Betrayed Privacy

A truly excellent article from Tim Wu in The New York Times

Some Highlights

”For much of human history, what we now call “privacy” was better known as being rich. Privacy, like wealth, was something that most people had little or none of. Farmers, slaves and serfs resided in simple dwellings, usually with other people, sometimes even sharing space with animals. They had no expectation that a meaningful part of their lives would be unwatchable or otherwise off limits to others. That would have required homes with private rooms. And only rich people had those.”

and

”The forces of wealth creation no longer favor the expansion of privacy but work to undermine it. We have witnessed the rise of what I call “attention merchants” and what the sociologist Shoshana Zuboff calls “surveillance capitalism” — the commodification of our personal data by tech giants like Facebook and Google and their imitators in telecommunications, electronics and other industries. We face a future in which active surveillance is such a routine part of business that for most people it is nearly inescapable. In this respect, we are on the road back to serfdom.

and

”The richest companies in the world now generate wealth by putting as many trackers, devices and screens inside our homes and as close to our bodies as possible. Accumulated data creates competitive advantage, and money can be made by consolidating everything that is known about an individual.”

and

”To be truly effective, privacy laws must seek to change the incentives that foster gratuitous surveillance and the reckless accumulation of personalized data. We need strong bans, including those that prohibit companies from sharing their customers’ personal information. New rights for consumers have to be easy to understand (like the European Union’s “right to be forgotten”) and easy to use (like a national “do not track” list). And companies that repeatedly fail to protect sensitive data need to face dire consequences.”

Anger In A Covid World

“Sprinkle in some f-bombs and add a large container of assorted curse words, let marinate in a 21 day quarantine and BOOM… you have……. me.”

Paul Craig

My Thoughts

I think Paul was channeling my inner thoughts. Ok - not always ‘inner’.

What do you think? How do you feel?

Not Yet Attributed

Sometimes I find or hear great quotes - but can’t attribute them, so I am collecting them here.

“We are not waiting for anything at all anymore … this is a problem”

”We are not inheriting this planet from our parents, we are borrowing it from our children.”

”Don’t eulogize the past until the future has had its turn.”

Detachment

Keanu Reeves: ‘Grief and loss, those things don’t ever go away’

Keanu Reeves was born in Beirut, Lebanon, the son of an English mother and Hawaiian-Chinese father. (His first name, as all Reeves-ologists know, is Hawaiian for “cool breeze over the mountains”.) With his sister Kim, the family moved around the world, from Australia to Manhattan, before finally settling in Toronto when Reeves was six. I reckon you can often spot an adult who moved around a lot as a kid, I tell him. “Oh yeah? How?” he says, intrigued.

They tend to have a sense of detachment, self-sufficiency, maybe loner tendencies and a strong sense of independence, I say. “Yeah, I clinically belong to that. I definitely have a bit of the gypsy in me,” he agrees.

Unexpected Wisdom | A Sufi Tale

A man caught a bird. The bird said to him, “Release me, and I will give you three valuable pieces of advice. I will give you the first when you let me go, the second when I fly up to that branch, and the third when I fly up to the top of the tree.”

The man agreed, and let the bird go.

Now free, the bird said, “Do not torture, torment and burden yourself with excessive regret for past mistakes”

The bird then flew up to a branch and said,

“Do not believe anything that goes against common sense, unless you have firsthand proof.”

Then the bird flew up to the top of the big tree and said,

“ You fool. I have two huge jewels inside of me. If you had killed me instead of letting me go, you would have been rich.”

“Darn it!” the man exclaimed.

“How could I have been so stupid? I am never going to get over this. Bird, can you at least give me the third piece of advice as a consolation?”

The bird replied, “I was merely testing you. You are asking for further advice, yet you already disregarded the first two pieces of advice I gave you. First, I told you not to torment yourself with excessive regret for past mistakes and second I told you not to believe things that go against common sense unless there is firsthand proof.

And yet, you just tormented yourself with regret for letting me go, and you also believed that somehow there are two huge jewels inside a tiny bird like me!

So here now is your third piece of advice:

“If you are not applying what you already know, why are you so intent on gaining what you do not know?”

Not really sure where this came from - but should I find out will credit.

Why the Second Wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu Was So Deadly

The first KNOWN case of the Spanish flu was in the mid west - Kansas

I like this explanation of how it came to be known as The Spanish Flu:

”Interestingly, it was during this time that the Spanish flu earned its misnomer. Spain was neutral during World War I and unlike its European neighbors, it didn’t impose wartime censorship on its press. In France, England and the United States, newspapers weren’t allowed to report on anything that could harm the war effort, including news that a crippling virus was sweeping through troops. Since Spanish journalists were some of the only ones reporting on a widespread flu outbreak in the spring of 1918, the pandemic became known as the “Spanish flu.”

Source

and then …

”The second wave of the Spanish flu mutated into an even more deadly virus.”

Sometimes Isolation Brings Out The Best In You

”Isaac Newton did some of his best research when Cambridge closed due to the plague. Shakespeare wrote King Lear while he hid out from the plague as well. Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, while he was laid up in the hospital, expressly forbidden from working on something as tough as a novel. Malcolm X educated himself in prison and turned himself into the activist the world needed.”

Source : Alive Time or Dead Time. What Will It Be?

tags; 😂

Managing Self Isolation

Heard a Dr. on TV say to get through the bordom of self isolation we should finish things we start and thus have more calm in our lives. So I looked through the house to find all the things i’ve started but hadn’t finished…so I finished off a bottle of Merlot, a bottle of Chardonnay, a bodle of Jock Danielas, a butle of wum, tha mainder of Valiumun srciptuns, an a box a chocletz. Yu haf no idr how feckin fablus I feel rite now. Sned this to all who need inner piss. An telum u luvum.

A Joke From The Internet!

On Transition

“Not in his goals but in his transitions man is great.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Strategy and Tactics

”Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

Sun Tzu

Sun Tzu