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Targeted Ads (2)
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 2342
Been awhile again since I've cleared my cookies, this time all the ads on YouTube are offering me a criminal pardon.
For what I wonder? Clearly my browsing habits are suspect, or my musical tastes put me in a dodgy demographic, and I wonder what specifically I've been accused of...Bank Robber? Drug Dealing? Sexual Predator? The ads aren't that specific, only that I should apply now and get a full pardon...
It makes you think of the larger picture, the society we live in, where we share so much, on facebook, twitter, tumbler, you name it, we're voluntarily baring an artificial staged version of our lives to the world. And behind the scenes, Big Data, as revealed by Snowdon, is assembling an even more thorough picture of us than we can imagine. Even George Orwell never imagined anything like this.
Our every search and click on the web is tracked and saved by our ISP's, our every online purchase, our every email, photo, posted online, is copied and stored in mass data facilities, even when we're not online (and that is rarer than we think), the EULA (End User License Agreements) often bind us to ridiculous agreements we'd never consent to if we took the time to read them. Few of us do, look through your Windows 10 EULA (you didn't upgrade, did you? Well, you read the EULA first, I'm sure...) and find that even your offline activities are tracked and shared...
Cell phones, every photo, text, tweet, phone call, download, is stored and archived, along with geophysical and temporal data - where and when you made the call, and to whom, even when turned off they track our location, and all of this data is warehoused in giant banks of servers, offshore, Utah, Edward Snowdon tried to wake us up, the government arbitrarily declared him a criminal.
GPS data, collected even when you've turned your phone off, triangulated via cell towers, leave your phone at home and your vehicle will now report back your location, the continuing integration of technology in our lives makes it increasingly impossible to escape it's pitfalls...
Algorithms sort, collate the data, developing a picture - precisely - of who we are. Better than many of us know ourselves. And while the data is vast it only awaits the right person (or wrong) to ask the question, and all the answers are at their fingertips...
This information, distilled and made available to corporations in abstract, aggregate forms, helps them to decipher and predict our behaviors, target us better, prey upon our needs and wants, to direct, extort, exploit us, the data, the product...
And the police, already, bill C-51, wanting access to it, the government's far too compliant, it's an easy leap to imagine this information being used to implicate people in thought-crimes, - wait - it already has, think terrorism, Minority Report, the web, internet, not only serving us but engaging us, leading us further in wrong directions, this constant, targeting of us, assisting, predictive texting, and ultimately betraying...
...And now I begin thinking of crimes to commit...
Derren Brown - Pushed to the Edge
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Other
- Hits: 1940
I used to quite like Derren Brown - his stage shows and early television was excellent. But it's gotten to be the most vile form of reality TV, with a troop of trained actors and a dupe, sensationalist, with a preachy psychological moral at the end that reminds me for all the world of Jerry Springer's moralizing at the end of one of his particularly vile talk shows. Give it a miss.
Laura Marling - My Manic & I
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Music
- Hits: 1997
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Woodstock...
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2586
Exhausted, last night, a long week. Early (ish) night, home to change then go out.
Where to? Someplace we can sit and recover...
A***** and I, parking near 10th Ave and 2nd St SW, we'll do a pub crawl...
The first one, Backlot, upstairs, Lesbian bar resembling a good house party filled with girls. I'm thinking Gertrude Stein. Lesbians, every one, a very few attractive, midgets, BBW, the surprisingly straight looking ones, they're friendly enough, a beer here...
He hasn't taken his mushrooms, he's not as tolerant. I've taken a mere cap, but it was a good cap...
We give it up. He's not doing so well...
Walk down the street. Night Owl, $30.00 cover, fuck that. Next bar, HiFi club, $15.00 Cover, let's try this...
We'd done this before, on unsuccessful nights out, not a good night, tonight, we'll ride it out, it'll be different...
And it is...great DJ, Greazus & Sinisstarr, great bass, I'm loving it, feeling it...
Turn's out he still hasn't dropped his 'shroom. And clearly one wasn't enough, the music, the bass, it's eluding him...I recognize one of the Beano Barista's there, don't acknowledge her, not snobbery, only the understanding that we all want our moments of anonymity..
He's tolerant, rides it out, for the vast majority of the crowd it's a rave, for a few of the more rednecked Calgaryians it's an excuse to get extra-drunk...
Wrong meds, folks,...
I'm loving it, as are 80% of the crowd, but they're not buying drinks, they've other treats, I have too, only not with me, already dosed, could use some more, especially for A*****, who's not getting it at all, describes it as "The Inferno", a reference to Dante, the music impossible to dance to...still, everyone, on their medication of choice, is friendly, very friendly, and the music, the bass, it's filling the soul...
I compromise, halfway, 1:15 We go to the gay-bar, the music here, the women, however bad, he can understand...
Same-old Same-old, and from here, the late night Chinese, then home....
...The next day, later, recovering, the internal monologue silenced, quietly at Beano, the Barista from the night before is off, relief, I would have wondered how she could have done it...sitting, staring, drinking my morning coffee, and I meet "Howard", maybe 60, he sees me sitting quietly, contemplative, gathering myself together...
"Were you at Woordstock Man? !970?" Clearly I've been partying a little too hard, obviously hard, it's in my eyes...
"Janice Joplin...now wasn't she ...." and he nods, winks and gestures to indicate his 45 year old obsession....
I gotta stop partying so hard.
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