[kictanet] Fwd: [Internet Policy] The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Fri Apr 5 15:40:06 EAT 2019

 Great find, Barrak! Added to my reading list.
Indeed the manufacturing of thought and behavior in humans is much more profitable (e.g. in terms of computational simplicity and efficiency at scale) than observing truly independent behaviors with a view of making predictions about specific individuals. The author is not being sensational when she claims that we are being automated. That's exactly what is happenning.
Rabbit hole and information bubble algorithms create narrow tunnels of knowledge into which groups of people can be gently herded (nudge theory) so they can be collectively targeted for interest based ads. This is the opposite of what most people think with regard to how surveillance capitalism works, because most people assume passive surveillance, naively believing that they are in control of their actions as they the platforms. 
As the author warns, gatekeeping the internet gives platforms immense power over what people know (or should know), and allows for covert manipulation of perspectives and thought (be they political or interests based).
What I haven't seen popping out from the interview is whether her book takes a closer look at addiction algorithms within the context of attention as a property and economic resource. Social media companies hire PHD level psycholgists and neuroscientists to help them design algorithms that turn people into addicts (using scientific insights about how the human brain's pleasure/reward system works). 
To the brain there is no difference between addiction to gambling, cigarettes, hard drugs or social media. It's all the same chemicals (dopamine) working in the same way. The goal of getting people addicted is so that they can boost engagement and then use your activity sell more ads. It's an ethical minefield.
Now, employers have paid for workers time but they are not aware that a third party has secretly turned their workers into addicts so that the third party can steal (yes, steal) and sell a fraction of the employer's time to advertisers. This should be illegal, but most employers are still in "old IT paradigm" with very few understanding how "new IT" works. 
Employers think it is the employee's fault - but the employee is not fully in control of their own actions (thanks to the work of brain science experts). 
At macro level, this diversion of workers attention is grand plunder of entire economies and contributes greatly to reduced productivity and lower innovation (besides the stolen, paid for time). 
At micro-level, people lose jobs and families are shattered because of disciplinary action (yet they were under some form of "mental hypnosis" and not fully aware of what they were doing).
The same case for our students... theft of attention wastes the precious resources that parents have sacrificed to invest in their children's education. The addicted child cannot maintain grades via honest means as they don't spend time studying. Further there is a likelihood that addictive algorithms could be a gateway to other addictive habits including drugs. All this can be quite alarming when looked at from a long term perspective.
... and we haven't even touched on the unintended consequence of malevolent ecosystem participants (radicalization / subversion agents).
The surveillance industry is sustained by silo thinking and self interest. We have businesses looking for easy ways to reach and/or engage customers, going "digital" by assiging teams on social media platforms to do "digital marketing" (which literally feeds the monster and its crooked collaborators e.g. the billion dollar click fraud industry)! 
Recently, some large companies in the US significantly cut down their digital marketing budgets and, lo and behold, observed no impact on sales. This has led to doubts about the value of current digital marketing models which tend to be rely heavily on opaqueness and unaccountability.
The whole business model is broken, unethical and needs a complete reset. 
Thanks again Barrak for the heads up and have a great day!
Brgds,Patrick.
Patrick A. M. Maina[Cross-domain Innovator | Independent Public Policy Analyst - Indigenous Innovations]
    On Friday, April 5, 2019, 11:44:11 AM GMT+3, Barrack Otieno via kictanet <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:  

 Patrick,

This might be of interest :-)

Regards

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Richard Hill <rhill at hill-a.ch>
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2019 15:35:00 +0200
Subject: [Internet Policy] The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
To: "Internetpolicy at Elists. Isoc. Org" <internetpolicy at elists.isoc.org>

I presume that most people on this list will have heard about a book by a
Harvard professor that is highly critical of the current advertising-driven
Internet business model. Here is a review:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/20/shoshana-zuboff-age-of-su
rveillance-capitalism-google-facebook

Best,

Richard

-- 
Barrack O. Otieno
+254721325277
+254733206359
Skype: barrack.otieno
PGP ID: 0x2611D86A

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