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socialcoolingon Social Cooling – How big data is increasing pressure to conform

It's not 'obvious'. The goal of that chart is not to be a perfect representation of history. It's to show 'greatest hits'. Foucault was a superstar-philosopher who was a regular TV guest. His panopticon analysis is way more widely know than Goffman's analysis (as much as I love Goffman).

socialcoolingon Social Cooling – How big data is increasing pressure to conform

The difference is: - scale - transparency (ability to complain or discuss decisions). - culture: people can recognize normal discrimination, but think algorithmic judgements are 'neutral'.

Check out https://www.mathwashing.com

socialcoolingon Social Cooling – How big data is increasing pressure to conform

Ignorance is not a way out.

In 2015 the databroker market was already worth 150 billion dollars in the US alone. (source: FCC report on databrokers)

socialcoolingon Social Cooling – How big data is increasing pressure to conform

Those buttons are privacy-friendly (as stated right above them). They don't load any tracking scripts.

socialcoolingon Social Cooling – How big data is increasing pressure to conform

I had the same problem.

socialcoolingon Social Cooling – How big data is increasing pressure to conform

Yes, it's becoming more difficult to argue that users are giving 'informed consent' when they sign up to 'free' services.

In the EU the new GDPR law is already making the 'informed consent' requirement more strict. http://www.eudataprotectionlaw.com/consent-under-the-general...

socialcoolingon Social Cooling – How big data is increasing pressure to conform

Author here:

I also worry about Learned Helplessness, where we believe that there is nothing we can do about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

In Silicon Valley the Technological Determinist view that technology has it's own will, that it is some unstoppable force, is the dominant but dangerous viewpoint.

That idea is only creating a self-fulfilling prophesy.

The reality is that we as a society have always taken the rough edges of new technologies through the creation of laws and new norms. For example, we pretty much put a halt to nuclear energy.

We can and we must regulate the Big Data world much more. And the first step is that we must help people understand the problem.

socialcoolingon Social Cooling – How big data is increasing pressure to conform

Author here:

Being trained as a media theorist I understand your criticism (and am going to check out Horkheimer's essay, thanks for the tip!).

But this website purposefully tries to keep things accessible in order to reach a wider audience.

I often see how academics have a deep understanding of what's going on, but just aren't as good at spreading that insight to a wider audience, like the startup community.

socialcoolingon Social Cooling – How big data is increasing pressure to conform

Author of the website here:

The website does link to a lot of scientific studies actually. Both throughout the page and at the bottom.

But I purposefully didn't want to link directly to the PDF's of those studies too much. By pointing to accessible news articles about those studies in the "further reading" section I was hoping to keep things accessible to a wider audience.

This article that appeared in The Guardian today about Social Cooling has some more sources you may like. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/18/google...

And you may also like "Postscript op societies of Control" by philosopher Deleuze, that greatly inspired this view. https://www.qwant.com/?q=Postscript+op+societies+of+Control

We need catchy concepts to reach a wider audience.