drsmooth wrote:TenuredVulture wrote:Unless you're willing to live under a bridge or in a cave, forgo any professional medical treatment, and more or less live a modern life, you're going to turn over massive amounts of personal data to people who are not necessarily benevolent.
Hasn't the kind of data under examination always been "turned over" in various ways in the process of forging relationships? The forging of trust has since about ever involved the tribal elders breaking bread, shaking hands (no sword in that mitt? Hey, good to meetcha!), smiling, exchanging daughters, and making nice.
That institutional, particularly governmental, entities have ratcheted up the asymmetry of exchange over the centuries, and have harnessed formidable technologies to do so - tech we little people also find handy & for similar purposes - is one among many worthwhile matters to examine, or re-examine, in considering what useful steps can be taken from here by the country and the people best-positioned to create policy in this area.
There's a point, and we're past it, where the quantity increases that we're talking about a change in quality. In addition, it's now all cloaked in a language of benevolence that makes it all the more sinister. Again, I'm far more concerned about the coerciveness of the so-called free market than PRISM. Fordism and all that.
And yet--maybe we are better off. Mostly, for instance, anti-smoking campaigns have worked. And they've worked in part by crawling inside our minds.
