“[F]or many years, not just the post-World War II era but also the colonial era, governments saw one of their chief roles as being the creation and protection of markets for large companies (which in turn employed large amounts of the governments' citizens). My question at a very fundamental level is…”— Ben Thompson, stratechery.com
“Remember, everything is a system. And, given the changes wrought by the post 1970s wave of globalization, it is foolish to think that a core component of society — labor — can be fundamentally changed without there being knock-on effects on the other components of that system.”— Ben Thompson, stratechery.com
“Second, the surveillance economy is way too dangerous. Even if you trust everyone spying on you right now, the data they're collecting will eventually be stolen or bought by people who scare you. We have no ability to secure large data collections over time.”— Maciej Cegłowski, idlewords.com
“When we talk about the moral economy of tech, we must confront the fact that we have created a powerful tool of social control. Those who run the surveillance apparatus understand its capabilities in a way the average citizen does not. My greatest fear is seeing the full might of the surveillance ap…”— Maciej Cegłowski, idlewords.com
“Those who benefit from the death of privacy attempt to frame our subjugation in terms of freedom, just like early factory owners talked about the sanctity of contract law. They insisted that a worker should have the right to agree to anything, from sixteen-hour days to unsafe working conditions, as…”— Maciej Cegłowski, idlewords.com
“Fortunately we are smart people and have found a way out of this predicament. Instead of relying on algorithms, which we can be accused of manipulating for our benefit, we have turned to machine learning, an ingenious way of disclaiming responsibility for anything. Machine learning is like money lau…”— Maciej Cegłowski, idlewords.com