Recently, I wrote a blog about data mining – how researchers track our electronic habits while we e-shop or use social networking. We pay for the convenience by opening ourselves to practices that invade our privacy. (5/20/13) I see no way to avoid data collectors unless we unplug our electronic devices. Nonetheless, Jaron Lanier, author of You are Not a Gadget is a computer scientist as well as a writer, and he advises us to stop offering ourselves up on a platter. We are fast becoming commodities as well as consumers in the eyes of of retailers, he warns. His concern is especially for the young who are so eager to join the Borg hive that the notion of personal privacy may be a dying concept.
You young people ought to wake up. By buying into the digital life style, ‘You’ve become passive little playthings of Silicon Valley and Wall Street, screwing yourselves over for their profit.’ The sad thing is that this isn’t ‘some evil conspiracy that’s taking away your future.’ You’re giving it away! ‘You’re sending all you data to companies in California so that they can sell behavioral models of you to whoever pays them the most to manipulate you. And in exchange, what do you get? A chance to promote yourself? Likes and retweets? Reputation? Good will? Those ‘informal online benefits’ are great but be warned. ‘You can’t retire on them.’ (“The great digital con game,” by Jaron Lanier, Excerpt from the New York Post by The Week, May 17, 2013, pg. 38.)
I won’t go on. I couldn’t have said it better.
(Courtesy of velositor.com)
