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Hannes Grassegger contemplates the themes of Big Data and the price of free in this essay (and his book). Probably most of that will be familiar to fellow Soylentils but I think it made a surprisingly refreshing read anyways. Now would be a great time to cut the cord, stop feeding the monsters.
Privacy. Transparency. Surveillance. Security gap. I can’t stand to hear the words anymore. They simply downplay a radical new condition: We no longer own ourselves.
You want proof? If personal data is the oil of the 21st century—a commodity companies pay billions of dollars for—then why aren’t we, the source of such data, the oil sheiks?
This new oil, this content, big data, it’s personal data—it's me. My digital personality. Today "going online" is no longer a choice or a potentiality, but rather a necessary condition of existence. It is essential. Part of me. I spend at least half of my time online: both professionally and privately. As Artie Vierkant recently said, we live in a “post-internet” reality. The internet is not a separate realm anymore, it’s become an integral part of life. My identity remains unified, but it’s become partially digital. We’re made of atoms and of bits. The internet is the externalization of my inner world. And this inner world is clearly linked to the rest of me.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by choose another one on Sunday November 20 2016, @12:09PM
Open protocol is great. Open protocol implementation is where it starts to get problematic, because infrastructure costs and big infrastructure costs a lot. YOu need to build your infrastructure before your users arrive, and build it big enough so it doesn't collapse and drive them away again, all the while not knowing how many users you will get, or how long they'll stay.
Realistically the only way this sort of stuff can be funded is if you have a plan to monetize your users, either by selling data and eyeballs (ads) or charges. Free beats paid most of the time for most of the users. Anyone remember Friends Reunited, anyone ever pay for it ?