Have you seen this recent viral article on the information social media companies collect about you?
Trust
In the one of the first replies to this article (no, I didn’t read them all) the writer asks “Do you really trust Google?” My answer is “yes, completely”. Google is a for profit information company and I trust it to collect every scrap of information about me and the rest of the world it can. I trust it to profit from this information in any way it can. A company, like a robot or an AI, has no human morality, no conscience, no moral compass. These characteristics have to come from the humans who control it — or abdicate that control.
“Trust” does not stand alone as a concept. To be meaningful it has to be accompanied by answers to the questions, trust whom? to do what? under what circumstances? And it is we humans who must supply those answers, thoughtfully.
Thoughts Left Out
What this article doesn’t say explicitly is that turning on the security controls doesn’t stop the tracking. The next step to privacy is to be very specific about what actions to take. For example, if I turn wi-fi off on my computer is it really offline or just not reporting to me? It isn’t in the interest of Google to tell us these things. The company’s advertisers (other profit-making companies) want us to expose ourselves so that they can entice us to buy their products. They don’t want us to control their access to information about us and they don’t want us to control our impulse to buy. Why would they make it easy for us to protect that information? Why would we “trust” them to do so?
I’ve been teaching since 1975 that the only way to stop a robot (or computer) is to detach it from its power source. That means, if it’s, say, solar powered, get inside it and snip the wires between the charger, the batteries and the cpu. This will also work if you want to stop a computer program designed to collect information that will result in giving it the ability to present images to us that will trigger behavior we might later regret. Asking a company to act against its self-interest seems unlikely to succeed. No matter how many apologies or assurances Facebook publishes, its survival depends on keeping your information flowing in. In the end, I don’t think greater privacy controls will solve the problem. Rather, we need to accept responsibility for responding to those oh-so-effective triggers.
What is Privacy?
The other thesis the article misses is that our whole concept/expectation of privacy has changed in the last 3 centuries. It used to be that “privacy” was the cultural practice of averting one’s eyes rather than today’s assumption that we ought to be able to prevent direct access to information. If you were a servant in an upperclass household, a clerk in a bank, or perhaps a resident in a multifamily, Native American longhouse, you saw a lot of things you never talked about. It’s only recently that a significant number of humans have lived in conditions where information we now expect to be “private” was not readily available across a broad swath of neighbors, relatives, and tradespeople. The more I confront this topic the more convinced I become that we will find relief from our distress in cultural adaptation, not technical fixes.
Maybe some of today’s youngsters have got a better idea. Just take naked pictures of yourself and post them.
on their screen? And whose responsibility is it to understand what you are doing when you follow a suggestion on your screen?
Most of governing is a huge void. You can fill that void by exercising your rights and opportunities to control. If you don’t, someone else will, often someone with whom you don’t agree. Elected officials can’t represent the people if the people can’t articulate what they want. Most people have no conscious idea of how they govern themselves, their families, neighborhoods, cities, counties, states, not to mention national governments. Understanding your own values and perspectives at a deep level is key.
It’s also where the political rubber meets the road. So while the public is enthralled with billion-dollar campaigns for elected office and arguing about which official will view their particular beef favorably, those who wield the real power are introducing themselves to the office staff. “I’d like to volunteer for Committee X or Commission Y.” “I’m available for your next opening as a writer or an analyst.” Public opinion about the use of police
We equate voting with performing our “civic duty”. We think “government of the people” can be done by making more and more state and federal laws instead of by being mindful of the billions of small action decisions we collectively make on a daily basis.
The tag line reads: “Since 1979, the federal government has recommended flossing daily to help prevent gum disease and cavities. But according to a new report by the Associated Press, there’s little scientific evidence to support that advice. We’ll drill down into the data, and we want to hear from you: Will the news affect your oral hygiene routine?”
When dealing with personal health, paying attention to statistical probability tells us only how likely it is that a medication or treatment will help us but tells us nothing about how any one person will respond. The bottom line, on flossing or any other medical recommendation, is to look for a personal solution. The fact that a treatment doesn’t work for 99 out of 100 people does not prove it will not work for you or me.