02/17/21
Computers, it was reported in 2020, quantum simulated a simple
chemical reaction.
John Pople and and Walter Kohn were awarded the Nobel for
contributions and developing the use of computers to understand
chemical structures with quantum mechanical concepts. (1998)
.
To my knowledge little has been described about the impact of
the chemical enterprise.
.
Sure, we can order chemicals using computers, manage
accounting and monitor reactions by computers, but in many
realms from politics to social physics to organizational behavior
to raw economics, surveillance capitalism is dominating
21st century life.
.
It is commodification of personal data. The
extension to chemistry where data is compiled and analyzed
with computers is only a matter of time to find applications.
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February 19th, 2021 at 7:38 am
Examples:
stealing corporate secrets
espionage
scooping emerging concepts
February 21st, 2021 at 11:19 am
Paragraph from Zuboff, “…Surveillance Capitalism…”
“The word “search” has meant a daring existential journey,
not a ‘finger tap’ to already existing answers; that a “friend”
is an embodied mystery that can be forged only face-to-face
and heart-to-heart; and that recognition is the glimmer of
homecoming we experience in our beloved’s facial recognition.
It is not ok to have our best instincts for connection, empathy,
and information exploited by draconian ‘quid pro quo’ that
holds these goods hostage to the pervasive strip search of
our lives.
[My insertion to make clear.]
It is not ok to have every move, utterance, emotion, and
desire to be catalogued, manipulated and then used
surreptitiously to herd us through the future tense for the
sake of someone else’s profits.”
March 11th, 2021 at 12:55 pm
Recent editorial on congressional action cited in:
March 11th, 2021 at 1:29 pm
From nytimes.com.
3-6-21
Opinion | America, Your Privacy Settings Are All Wrong - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Opinion America, Your Privacy Settings Are All Wrong Using an opt-in
approach will help curb the excesses of Big Tech.
“Every minute a person spends online helps
countless companies build a thicker dossier
about that person. Despite what corporations
profess, much of this personal data is used not
to improve products themselves, but to make
those products more attractive to advertisers.
One straightforward solution is to let people
opt in to data collection on apps and websites.
Today, with few exceptions, loads of personal
data are collected automatically by default
unless consumers take action to opt out of the
practice — which, in most cases, requires
dropping the service entirely.
…
federal legislation is so urgently needed. That
should include provisions making personal data
collection available only with consumers’ prior
consent. (Some data is needed to ensure
products are working properly.) “…
April 2nd, 2021 at 12:23 pm
Leading commentary on Internet use forming the “surveillance”
business model is:
Scott Gallaway, “POST CORONA: FROM CRISIS TO
OPPORTUNITY” Portfolio/Penguin 2020, P. 33-35
[Worth reading if this is important to you.]
’There are two fundamental business models.
1. A company can sell stuff for more than the cost of making it.
APPLE, takes ~$400 of components and with promises of status
and sex appeal through brilliant advertising, charges $1200 for
an iPhone.
2. A company can give stuff away or sell it below cost and charge
other companies for access to its product: the consumer’s
behavioral data.
NBC has Seinfeld produce a show and film episodes and beam
it free with several minutes of ads for which it charges
advertisers. The product is YOU.
In the tech based economy model 2 is more lucrative and
invasive. In the old days pre-pandemic, we gave up some of
our time and attention to get the free stuff that advertising
paid for. When relationships are online, the companies has
all of this data about us—what we read, where we shop,
who we talk to, what we eat, where we live. Using the data
to make even more money. We are trading our privacy for
value.
Note the division of industries. Android versus iOS. Android
offers a decent product for low or no upfront cost, but vacuums
up your data and privacy. Collecting 1200 data points a day
from users and send them to the Google data-mining mother
ship.
iOS phones pull 200 , saying it protects privacy. Google
tracks your views, associates it with everything else it knows
about your and uses it all to sell you and your cohorts ads.
Netflix operates on the Red.iOS model. You pay and you
get content. You are the customer.
This divide will deepen Red and Blue Social Media.
Red: tiktok, Facebook (free, but no privacy)
Blue Twitter (subscription fee, some privacy Twitter has replaced
PR, news agencies and IR firms ‘
May 7th, 2021 at 5:40 pm
Sara Morrison wrote an informative piece in Recode
dark patterns include:
The trial streaming service you signed up for, only to be
automatically charged when the trial expired
The app interstitial ad you can’t figure out how to get
out of because the “X” on the top right-hand corner is
too small and faint to see … …
or the “X” is so small that you accidentally click on the
ad itself and are redirected to the ad’s website
The drugstore account you have to create to get a
vaccine appointment but can’t easily cancel
The marketing email that commands you to respond
within the next five minutes or else, and includes a
fake countdown timer
The big pop-up window urging you to sign up for a
website’s newsletter with a big red “Sign Me Up”
button, while the opt-out button is much smaller and
passive-aggressively implies that anyone who clicks is
a bad person who doesn’t care about saving money or
staying informed