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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (April 4, 2018)
Wednesday, April 4, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon The Bunkhouse Chronicle Craig Rullman Columnist BookFace and belt knives Revelations that Cambridge Analytical, a political consulting firm, secured the personal infor- mation of 50 million Facebook users have rocked the stock market, embar- rassed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and seen the indefinite suspension of Cambridge CEO Alexander Nix (see related story, page 22). Most importantly, this episode reveals the extent to which social network- ing sites and software apps are using personal informa- tion to penetrate the minds of their users in pursuit of agendas the user may not even be aware of. Facebook claims it was “deceived,” which may even be partially true, after Aleksandr Kogan, a Russian-American scien- tist working at Cambridge University used an app — thisismydigitallife — wherein Facebook users con- sented to give not only their own information, but that of their friends, while playing one of Facebook’s familiar click-bait psychological pro- file games. These apps offer users the thrilling prospect of find- ing out useful things, such as what kind of toaster they would be if they were an appliance, or which character in “Game of Thrones” most matches their personality. Which is how 270,000 unsuspecting users ended up becoming 50 million unsus- pecting users. That information was then given, or sold, or loaned, to Cambridge Analytical, a company which first came to life as Strategic Communications Laboratory Group, or SCL, fronted by British ad-man Nigel Oakes, who first offered politi- cal consulting during elec- tions in Indonesia, Thailand, Kenya, and the UK during the early 1990s. Cambridge Analytical, armed with “psychologi- cal profiles” compiled of Facebook users who played their game, then designed memes and other politi- cal ads targeted at Trump supporters. Zeynep Tufecki, an associate professor at the University of North C a r o l i n a ’s S c h o o l o f Information and Library Science, writes that this harvesting and storage of personal data is an “all- too-natural consequence of Facebook’s business model…profiling us and then selling our attention to advertisers, political actors, and others.” It’s possible you are read- ing this and feeling quite comfortable, maybe even smug, because you are one of the very few people NOT on Facebook. Think again. “Facebook even creates ‘shadow pro- files of non-users,’” Tufecki writes. “That is, even if you are not on Facebook, the company may well have compiled a profile of you, informed from data provided by your friends or from other data. This is an involuntary dossier from which you can- not opt out in the United States.” Facebook’s purpose isn’t to create convenient social connections. Facebook’s purpose is to make money. And the way they make money is by “package(ing) its members as neat and coherent sets of data for advertisers.” In other words, while you are giggling at the latest stu- pid meme, probably put in front of you by an advertiser, or a political shill, an unwit- ting Facebook friend, or a foreign intelligence agent, and then share it for a laugh, what’s really happening is that someone has turned your attention into a com- modity, selling your mind and personal proclivities on the open market like digital cattle in a gigantic feedlot. Only, in this scenario, the feeder steer being grain-fed for slaughter is actually you. Isn’t that hilarious? W h a t ’s p a r t i c u l a r l y unnerving about Cambridge Analytica, and their prede- cessors, is that they have openly claimed they are the “first ever private-sector provider of psychological operations,” specializing in “psychological warfare, pub- lic diplomacy, and influence operations.” Importantly, their aim isn’t just to influence your opinion, but to use the data they have acquired — by deception or otherwise — to about what we are, and what we are becoming. But as our technologies creep ever deeper into the most intimate parts of our thinking, often guided by unseen hands, don’t we owe our descen- dants the gift of resistance? Not rejection, mind you — we are not Luddites sabo- taging weaving frames — but well-considered resis- tance, so that we might bet- ter manage the unknowable consequences? “Automation severs ends from means,” Carr writes. “It makes getting what we want easier, but it distances us from the work of know- ing. As we transform our- selves into creatures of the screen, we face the…exis- tential question: Does our essence still lie in what we know, or are we now content to be defined by what we want?” In “The Course of Empire” the historian Bernard DeVoto wrote: “The first belt-knife given by a European to an Indian was a portent as great as the cloud that mushroomed over Hiroshima…Instantly the man of 6,000 B.C. was bound fast to a way of life that had developed seven and a half millennia beyond his own. He began to live better and he began to die.” Which is a valuable thought about how we view technology, where it might be taking us, and just how eager we should be to blindly embrace it. Quality Truck-mounted CARPET CLEANING Quality Cleaning 16 years in Reasonable Prices Sisters! — Credit Cards Accepted — ENVIROTECH 541-771-5048 Licensed • Bonded • Insured • CCB#181062 RESIDENTIAL • COMMERCIAL Have a story idea for cause you to take a particular course of action on behalf of their client. And that client can be vir- tually anyone with enough money to pay them. In his book “The Glass Cage, How Our Computers Are Changing Us,” Nicholas Carr writes: “Like meddle- some parents who never let their kids do anything on their own, Google, Facebook, and other makers of personal software end up demeaning and diminishing qualities of character that, at least in the past, have been seen as essential to a full and vigorous life: ingenuity, curiosity, independence, per- severance, daring…” But when we surrender those essentials of human character to the mysteries of the digital world, blindly engaging with entities of unknown and unknowable origin, and with unknown and unknowable design, “the ‘relationships and connec- tions’…become ‘enshrouded in abstraction.’” Worse, Carr suggests that “When an inscrutable tech- nology becomes an invisible technology… We no longer know whether the software is aiding us or controlling us. We’re behind the wheel, but we can’t be sure who’s driving.” Our technologies, to a large degree, inform what we are as a species. They challenge us, they force us to triage our priorities and to ask important questions MEATS • CHEESES • EATERY • DRINKERY 110 S. SPRUCE ST. | 541-719-1186 OPEN EVERY DAY 9 A.M. TO 7 P.M. Hope for a child. Change for a nation. The Nugget? We’d love to hear it! Send an email to editor@nuggetnews.com The Sweetest Gift of All…A Beautiful Smile! Call now to schedule your complimentary consultation $300 discount for the month of April when you start a comprehensive treatment program. New patients only. Flexible fi nancing. Smile by Eryn & The Brace Place! There are a million perfectly understandable reasons not to help. Thankfully, love trumps them all. $37 a month. All the difference in the world. Sponsor a child with a local organization at 541-382-0410 410 E. 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