Voices
that should stop the craziness.
Well, that may not help. About 12
months ago an Austrian student
named Max Schrems asked Facebook for a record of all personal
data they held on him. He received
1,222 pages of it on DVDs, and
much of it was information that
he thought he had deleted. Austria
and much of Europe’s data storage
laws are very tight about historical
data and ownership. He thought
that data should be deleted when
he deleted it. So do many other
people these days.
Jaron Lanier, an Internet pioneer
from the early 1990s, talks about
a “social contract” where the new
“open data culture” and thinking that “information wants to be
free” have produced a destructive
new social contract.
The basic idea of this contract
is that authors, journalists, musicians and artists are encouraged
to treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to
the hive mind. Reciprocity takes
the form of self-promotion. Culture is to become precisely nothing but advertising.
This is what we have become,
and we are responsible for stopping
it. If we choose to partake then we
NIKOLAS
BADMINTON
HUFFINGTON
12.09.12
need to stop complaining and get
into bed with every large brand
that markets relentlessly to us.
I have written this piece with
full knowledge that my contributions to my social network
have an impact on me and those
around me. I know I will be targeted with ads on social networks
and I learn much about myself
Culture is to become
precisely nothing but
advertising. This is what
we have become, and we are
responsible for stopping it.”
from that (mostly that targeting
is pretty useless).
I implore you to ask yourself,
“am I fully aware of what my actions mean?” and if not then
please try and make sense of the
terms and conditions of the numerous social networks you belong to. One should choose wisely
what one shares and accept the
fate one has chosen. If you take
the higher ground and choose
more traditional methods of communication then I applaud you
and support you in your
digital detox.