Marketers use big data profiling to predict who is about to get pregnant, who is likely to buy a new car, and who is about to change sexual orientations. That's how they know what ads to send to whom. The NSA, meanwhile, wants to know who is likely to commit an act of terrorism - and for this, they need us.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the use of data profiling in marketing and surveillance to predict human behavior and preferences.
In this quote, Douglas Rushkoff emphasizes the extent to which big data is utilized by marketers and government agencies to anticipate personal decisions and behaviors. He illustrates how sophisticated profiling techniques are employed not only to target consumers with specific advertisements but also to monitor and foresee potential threats, underscoring the ethical dilemmas surrounding privacy and consent in the age of information.
In practice
In a seminar about the ethics of data use, one could quote Rushkoff to spark debate on privacy concerns.
Like most early enthusiasts, I always thought the way the Internet encouraged multitasking made users less vulnerable to manipulation, while simultaneously exploiting even more of our brain's capacity than before. Apparently not.
The faux now of Twitter updates and things pinging at you - all the pulses from digitality that we try to keep up with because we sense that there's something going on that we need to tap into - are artifacts, or symptoms of living in this atemporal reality. And it's not any worse than living in the 'time is money' reality that we're leaving.
Treating an age group as a demographic requires coming up with something that's common to every single one of them. Right?... So it's reductionist in that it reduces an entire segment of civilization down to one person with one habit.
Brains are tricky and adaptable organs. For all the 'neuroplasticity' allowing our brains to reconfigure themselves to the biases of our computers, we are just as neuroplastic in our ability to eventually recover and adapt.
As popular culture becomes more presentist, we move away from entertainment as the vicarious experience of a narrative - as watching someone else's story - and much more toward enacting one's own story. Moving away from myths and toward fantasy role-playing games, away from movies and toward videogames.
The first step toward maintaining autonomy in any programmed environment is to be aware that there's programming going on. It's as simple as understanding the commercials are there to help sell things. And that TV shows are there to sell commercials, and so on.
The strength of the computer lies in its being a logic machine. It does precisely what it is programed to do. This makes it fast and precise. It also makes it a total moron; for logic is essentially stupid.
The minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.
The Internet offers opportunities that are more unique than ever before. With TV, I know I'm making 22 minutes; I know there's a commercial in the middle. With the Internet, no one knows anything. No rules.
The way to build a complex system that works is to build it from very simple systems that work.
Our values are that we do think that people have a right to privacy. And that our customers are not our products.
Measured in time of transport and communication, the whole round globe is now smaller than a small European country was a hundred years ago.
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