Here it is in July 2008, Nicholas Carr has essentially specified and created a small warning bell about the surveillance capitalism we’ve been experiencing for the past 13 years. He’s also put a bright yellow highlight on the method by which they would do it.
What are other early surveillance capitalism warning sources from this period?
Source
The idea that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines is not only built into the workings of the Internet, it is the network’s reigning business model as well. The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction. 1
tags:
links:
- broader terms (BT):
- narrower terms (NT):
- related terms (RT):
- used for (UF) or aliases:
connected ideas:
MOC:
What if they’re not? What if they’re building an advertising machine to manipulate us into giving them all our money?
From an investor perspective, the artificial answer certainly seems sexy while using some clever legerdemain to keep the public from seeing what’s really going on behind the curtain?
Source
Last year, Page told a convention of scientists that Google is “really trying to build artificial intelligence and to do it on a large scale.” 1
tags: links: messaging Larry Page artificial intelligence
- broader terms (BT): Google
- narrower terms (NT): misdirection
- related terms (RT): AdTech surveillance capitalism
- used for (UF) or aliases: connected ideas: MOC:
But are Google’s tools really making us more productive thinkers? One might argue that it’s attempting to do all the work for us and take out the process of thought all together. We’re just rats in a maze hitting a bar to get the food pellet.
What if the end is a picture of us as the people on the space ship at the end of WALL-E? What if it’s keeping us from thinking?
What if it’s making us more shallow thinkers rather than deep thinkers?
Cross reference P.M. Forni.
Source
The more pieces of information we can “access” and the faster we can extract their gist, the more productive we become as thinkers. 1
tags:
links: thinking productivity
- broader terms (BT):
- narrower terms (NT):
- related terms (RT): tools for thought
- used for (UF) or aliases:
connected ideas: textual productivity
MOC:
What if we want more serendipity? What if we don’t know what we really want? Where is this in their system?
Source
It seeks to develop “the perfect search engine,” which it defines as something that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.” 1
tags:
links: artificial intelligence
- broader terms (BT):
- narrower terms (NT):
- related terms (RT):
- used for (UF) or aliases:
connected ideas:
MOC:
The idea of Taylorism as a religion is intriguing.
However, underlying it is the religion of avarice and greed.
What if we just had the Taylorism with humanity in mind and took out the root motivation of greed?
This might be akin to trying to return Christianity to its Jewish roots and removing the bending of the religion away from its original intention.
It’s definitely the case that the “religion” is only as useful and valuable to it’s practitioners as the practitioners allow. In the terms of the Marshall McLuhan-esque quote “We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us.” we could consider religion (any religion including Taylorism) as a tool. How does that tool shape us? How do we continue to reshape it?
While I’m thinking about it, what is the root form of resilience that has allowed the Roman Catholic Church to last and have the power and influence it’s had for two millennia?
Source
Google’s headquarters, in Mountain View, California—the Googleplex—is the Internet’s high church, and the religion practiced inside its walls is Taylorism. 1
tags:
- broader terms (BT):
- narrower terms (NT):
- related terms (RT): tools Frederick Winslow Taylor
- used for (UF) or aliases:
connected ideas:
- [[We Shape Our Tools, and Thereafter Our Tools Shape Us — Quote Investigator June 08, 2021 at 1208PM]]
MOC:
This is the problem however. We can’t program humans out of the equation entirely, for what is the general enterprise meant for in the first place?
Source
“In the past the man has been first,” he declared; “in the future the system must be first.” —Frederick Winslow Taylor 1
tags: links: quote
- broader terms (BT): Frederick Winslow Taylor
- narrower terms (NT): manufacturing
- related terms (RT): humanity efficiency
- used for (UF) or aliases: connected ideas: systems thinking corporations as people MOC: