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SoylentNews is people

posted by n1 on Sunday November 20 2016, @04:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the made-of-money dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Sunday November 20 2016, @08:40PM

    by PizzaRollPlinkett (4512) on Sunday November 20 2016, @08:40PM (#430062)

    My problem with these vast databases of personal information has been how totally wrong they usually are. You have no control over what information about you is being stored in them, no way to correct it, no appeal to anyone, and no recourse.

    Even more strangely is how one of my email addrs gets added to spam lists from companies that I know nothing about. I've never heard of them, haven't done business with them, and they're usually nowhere near me. How do I get added to their spam lists? Where do they get my addr, which isn't some obvious throwaway addr. Sometimes I've started getting people's plane tickets and stuff. Mostly it's just advertising spam, but very specifically directed to me as a customer. Some database somewhere is wrong.

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    (E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
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