Re: paying users for their data
Felix says: "Now this is obviously the roughest of ballpark estimates you can make -- and I would be happy to see a better one -- but on the face of it, it seems to indicate that viewing one personal data as an economic asset is really a lousy idea, no matter how you slice it." Well, if you were being paid by some quasi-state surveillance operator to alienate yourself from your most intimate personal relationships, that would be quite a slice of contemporary life now, wouldn't it? But that's what would be happening if Facebook was remunerating your gaze. The idea of paying people for their attention has ever been the most narrow-minded decline of welfare-state unionism into abject Matrix-like servility. Create your own liberation and ditch the attention economy! BH # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: More Crisis in the Information Society.
Hi Mark, I was not suggesting that 'society' can be designed - a rather absurd idea indeed, but that we can 'design' democratic politics, which in my understanding means things like decision making procedures, oversight and control structures, protocols, both social and technological ones, forms and modes of assembly, deliberation spaces, communication modalities (alternative social media platforms for instance) and much much more. All these kinds of 'interventions' can certainly be designed, just as current institutional structures have been designed, and if they do not function properly they should be re-designed. But there is a much more serious flaw in your argument - it is overly techno-deterministic. Your claims imply that democracy would be a by-product of television and other mass-media. Maybe McLuhan and Kittler would like that idea, but it is way too crude. Democratic forms of governance evolved out of much deeper lineages, over much longer periods of time, mostly connected to the rise of new dominant groups in society (merchants / industrialists / workers / post-urban middle class, etc.) It is much more productive to think about the interaction of social processes and technological infrastructures in terms of 'assimilation' as Lewis Mumford proposed in his seminal two volume work The Myth of the Machine in the late 60s. The one cannot be thought without the other, but as many STS (Science and Technology Studies) scholars would say 'impact is dead' - i.e. the existence of the internet is not the cause of deeper changes in society but rather evolves along with them and they continuously interact and influence each other. Thus, the technological is not some condition that is just inflicted upon us, as some bad fate outside of human influence, but rather a force to be reckoned with and a force that can bend in different ways. No one is all powerful here, I agree with you on that, but we can all intervene at some level (micro/macro). So, I resolutely stand by by assertion that we need political design and not just critique, and what's more I think that it would be an absolute disaster to give up on our democratic ideals and aspirations - they will change, transform, mutate, but that's no reason to write them off because we are living in 'net-times'. Btw - I think that the operators of the control state would be very happy with such a fatalistic discourse. Bests, Eric # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: paying users for their data
Dear Felix I'm afraid you are mixing up value of personal data and value of time spend filling a service with this data. related, two demands on the User Rights: The Right to get Revenue http://userrights.contemporary-home-computing.org/u0ibb/ The right to be the (prime) beneficiary of whatever is created from our 'cognitive surplus'. http://userrights.contemporary-home-computing.org/ict3g/be-the-prime-beneficiary-of-whatever-i yours olia # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: paying users for their data
On 24.07.2014 11:29, Felix Stalder wrote: > If you divide the 30 cents income by the 60 hours work, the you end up > with an hourly-wage of $.005. > > Now this is obviously the roughest of ballpark estimates you can make -- > and I would be happy to see a better one -- but on the face of it, > it seems to indicate that viewing one personal data as an economic asset > is really a lousy idea, no matter how you slice it. Maybe the other way round: If users would have been paid for their data, business models driven by personal data would be less attractive or would look different at least. Additionally it heavily depends on which data is being sold: According to an OECD report [1] bankruptcy info is worth $25/record, employment history about $14/record and educational history about $12/record. Background check or employment screening packages are sometimes worth $100-300/query. If companies really start selling aggregated data & scores based on digital behaviour, on body & health data and on various sensors at home and workplaces at large scale this will be much more valueable than today's profits mainly based on advertising. Anyway it's a lousy idea and it doesn't solve any of the fundamental problems of corporate surveillance. Users love being tracked - even when they get (nearly) nothing for it. They're using loyality cards since ages, small (pseudo) incentives are sufficient to make them participate in nearly anything. [1] http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/futurium/sites/futurium/files/futurium/library/OECD%20-%202013%20-%20Exploring%20the%20Economics%20of%20Personal%20Data.pdf Cheers Wolfie -- Cracked Labs http://crackedlabs.org # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
paying users for their data
Occasionally there is the idea that the big internet companies, which collect and monetize user data, should pay their users directly, as they are, after all, the original producers of all that data. Jaron Lanier has made this argument, among others. So, lets make a simple calculation, based on Facebook's latest, better than expected, quarterly numbers. users: 1,32 billion revenue: 2,91 billion profit: 0.791 billion This is an incredible profit margin. Now, lets assume that Facebook would use half of that profit to pay users for their data. 395'000'000 / 1320'000'000 = .30 So, the average user would earn about 30 cents, per quarter. If it's correct that Facebook users spend 40 minutes per day on the site, then adds up to roughly 60 hours per quarter. If you divide the 30 cents income by the 60 hours work, the you end up with an hourly-wage of $.005. Now this is obviously the roughest of ballpark estimates you can make -- and I would be happy to see a better one -- but on the face of it, it seems to indicate that viewing one personal data as an economic asset is really a lousy idea, no matter how you slice it. -- | http://felix.openflows.com |OPEN PGP: 056C E7D3 9B25 CAE1 336D 6D2F 0BBB 5B95 0C9F F2AC # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: automated digest [x2: griffis, gurstein]
Very, very prescient of McLuhan but his otherwise extremely insightful analysis missed one element--the political economic context into which these technology induced changes would be introduced and which would both influence and be influenced by. Michael a few comments/observations/musings -- I wouldn't use the term 'induced' -- in our context, as we are still very much immersed/part of the post-WWII military-industrial-academic complex, the political-economic dimensions (changes) are not being altered by induction, the entire structure of that MIA-complex is what the power relations are constructed on/from to begin with. [Induction is a concept about energy-transfer precipitating 'at a distance' between two otherwise disconnected systems.] Of course those power relations do evolve, and the MIA complex is not the only actor, given the power shifts of globalization. (Do we include the Army of the People's Republic of China and the entire mining/manufacturing/feeding regime that is integral to it as part of it? SURE!) The gist of the conversation here has isolated the 'digital' & IT from the larger context of power structures and relations that it is still completely embedded within. To make an IT device requires machines, big machines, machines in the Industrial Revolution sense, and it requires numerous layers of those -- ever driven a 250-ton dump truck operating in a gold mine; ever bucked 10-inch pipe on a rotary-drilling platform on an oil rig? All these machines (and their operators) are part of a political/economic power structure that undergirds/immerses this IT sector (and it's expression of political/economics) that we speak about here in the isolated abstract. To ignore the political economics of ALL that wider system is to have a very unbalanced analysis of the overall set of human power relations (politics!) that drive our global techno-social system. What you call a 'new stage' is only a slight quantitative alteration in the relation between power expression and the feedback (surveillance, data gathering, data mining) that is/has been necessary to control the willing/unwilling participants in the system. It is clear that as feedback increases asymptotically that the system experiences a form of internal sclerosis (Vaclav Havel wrote about this in "The Power of the Powerless" in 1985, and the East German 'Stasi' state is a good example). Sclerosis usually ends with the death of the organism. IMHO, none of the power relations in this techno-social system have anything to do with democracy. And especially these days, it is no wonder that there would be an "existential crisis, for Western democracies and their camp followers." Unfortunately I think that this crisis arises out of a general ignorance of the 'real' power relations that, again, arise from the fundamental structures of the MIA and that all our relations (even here on 'nettime') are predicated on. Cheers, JH -- ++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD grounded on a granite batholith twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++ # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: More Crisis in the Information Society
Eric: But society *cannot* be "designed" -- not by you or anyone else. Indeed, this is why so many people are "naive" to imagine that there is a "Deep-State" (which doesn't exist and about which the Snowden disclosures tell us nothing) or that there is anyone to whom you could give a "Big Brother Award." All this is amusing fantasy which is now confronted with harsh reality . . . !! > The conclusion to draw from all of this is that the political > system as it is composed and functions right now is defunct Correct, but not for the reasons you imagine . . . > not the internet is broken, but democratic politics is broken. Correct, and (perhaps without knowing it) you have put your finger on the *cause* of the current "broken" situation -- the "Internet" is incompatible with "democracy" (and "globalism" and "consumerism" and a whole lot more.) > The response should not be to give up on all our democratic > values and aspirations, but instead to re-emphasise them, > more forcefully than ever. Wrong. Those "values" are not the ones we are going to move forward with. They were given to you by an environment that no longer has any power over you. So, along with that environment (i.e. television), those values are now also *obsolete* -- KAPUT . . . !! Those values are the product of the "psychological war" that you (and the rest of us) have been bombarded with all of our lives. They are the "Democratic Surround" that Fred Turner writes about and they were born in WW II, hatched by "psy-warriors" Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, as he amply documents. http://www.amazon.com/The-Democratic-Surround-Multimedia-Psychedelic/dp/0226 817466/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406130582&sr=8-1&keywords=democratic+surround &dpPl=1 They are the product of "social engineering" and the *response* to the FAILURE of their efforts (i.e.which was the "defunct" system you mention) is NOT to double-down on trying to engineer its replacement. > And beyond analysis and critique, indeed how ever important, > I believe we need to engage in the design and re-design of > democratic politics - at the micro and the macro level. That won't work (which, given all the failures you list in your email, should be pretty obvious) . . . !! Instead of trying to "do something to society," we all need to try to UNDERSTAND what our technological environment is *doing* to us -- just as it gave us our "democratic values and aspirations," it is now giving us their replacements. LISTEN to the technology and hear what it is telling you (and think about what it means to be living in NETTIME) . . . Mark Stahlman Jersey City Heights # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
