Book review: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, By: Shoshana Zuboff
Ever wonder why that flashlight app you downloaded to your phone requires access to your location, and contacts, and camera, and microphone, and accelerometer? Because all that is behavioral data, and is being sold on a brand new marketplace. Yes, the dudes who built that little flashlight app are tracking and storing and then selling everything you do to Google, Facebook, and others. Google then turns around and sells you as a predictable purchasing thing to corporations that want to sell you something, or to political parties that want to shape your ideas. For a higher fee, Google will also influence your behavior, because they have the data make predictions about you. For example, the last two Fridays you watched a kung fu movie, and later that night visited a particular address, you started screaming (the volume went up on your phone microphone) and later that night you made some impulsive purchases on Amazon. Now that your purchasing habit is clear, Amazon will offer you a free kung fu movie, and when later you are predictably browsing for late night impulse purchases, advertizers who bought your name will be ranked at the top of the search list.
You get the idea.
Our buying habits are being correlated to everything else about our behavior. Then we receive input stimuli from Google/Facebook that will push us into a known purchasing behavior, or voting behavior, or any other kind of behavior that has a buyer.
There are no laws against this. But what about privacy? Well, your phone, all its apps, your ISP, your Alexa, your Roomba, your smart home thermostat, they ALL have user agreements that say these companies can collect everything they want, and sell it to anyone they want. We all enthusiastically agree to have no more privacy. This cannot really be called a bloodless revolution, because we are asking for it.
The Good of the book
well researched, investigative reporting
plenty of examples of how these large internet corporations are just doing whatever the heck they want with your data, not even following their own privacy policies, thumbing their noses at all governments
You will understand how surveillance capitalism is a new thing, hence there are very little regulations
You might actually wake up and start being careful with your privacy. Yeah, maybe I will not buy the Roomba model with the camera and microphone.
You will come to hate Google, Facebook ... or you will love them because, hey, they are just doing the coolest things, like influencing elections!
The Bad
She repeats herself a lot. With a better editor the book probably could have been half as long without losing anything
Did not leave me with any hope. Left me with, "we are screwed."
post script
I need to measure the amount of light coming from my plasma discharge tubes. Simple enough, just get a "light meter" app on the phone. But none of them allow the forward camera to be used. Strange. If I need to turn my phone front to face the plasma, the phone screen is brighter than the plasma, so that is useless. Look for settings, where I can choose the "forward" camera. Not available. I try another app, a second app, I keep going, a tenth app. None of them allow the forward camera. In other words, they all require that the camera pointing towards my face is the only camera that will be allowed.
hmm