Facebook isn’t a charity. The poor will pay by surrendering their data Hi all,
I thought I'd post this on the Netbehaviour list because it's a subject we have discussed the public is still coming to terms with. However, certain academics think this is now 'so last year' --- yet, just because they get sucked up into trends does not mean we are the same ;-) It would be interesting to see what you think regarding Morozov's ideas on the matter... Facebook isn’t a charity. The poor will pay by surrendering their data Silicon Valley holds out the promise of connectivity for all. But there’s a price to pay Evgeny Morozov "Luxury is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed. Such, at any rate, is the provocative argument put forward by Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist. Recently dubbed “the Varian rule”, it states that to predict the future, we just have to look at what rich people already have and assume that the middle classes will have it in five years and poor people will have it in 10. Radio, TV, dishwashers, mobile phones, flatscreen TVs: Varian sees this principle at work in the history of many technologies. So what is it that the rich have today that the poor will get in a decade? Varian bets on personal assistants. Instead of maids and chauffeurs we would have self-driving cars, housecleaning robots and clever, omniscient apps that can monitor, inform and nudge us in real time. As Varian puts it: “These digital assistants will be so useful that everyone will want one and the scare stories you read today about privacy concerns will just seem quaint and old-fashioned.” Google Now, one such assistant, can monitor our emails, searches and locations and constantly remind us about forthcoming meetings or trips, all while patiently checking real-time weather and traffic in the background." http://bit.ly/1GvF7yJ
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