The Power of Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon et al

When a megalomanic dynasty falls apart I celebrate. What about Google, Apple, Facebook et al? The megalomaniac seems pretty appropriate. We think of them as being just massively creative, but when creativity is used to accumulate power and control it gets another name: greed. The greed that drives the eWorld isn't a beautiful thing or a strength, it's an inner monster that strips people of their humanity. 

What does a company need to monopolize the world for? Because companies are about people, right? How much money can an individual spend in a day on things that they can actually use?

Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon et al run roughshod over whoever is in their way. Remorseless, relentless. But we idolize them - because they make billions by producing bright toys and using brilliant PR to convince us we need them? Because they work incessantly to evade responsibility and to increase their control over us?

Accumulating, accumulating. Meanwhile, the middle class in the US fights for survival; around the world children are sold into forced labor; women are sold as sex slaves. There's a lot that these companies could do if they really applied themselves but they don't. 

Celebrity-corporate individuals call themselves philanthropists and get mega strokes for donating a million here, a million there. But it's chump change to them.

It’s hard to imagine now what the world would be like if Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple fell off the face of the earth. But I guess a few years before Gaddaffi was tossed out it was hard for Libyans to imagine what life would be like living free of him. 

Too much power corrupts. Not because power in itself is a bad thing, but because anybody who wants that much power is inherently weak, not strong.

Big Brother isn't NSA and the US Government, it's Google and Facebook

When I first heard of George Orwell’s 1984 it sounded so science fiction and beyond my capacity to grasp as a potential reality that I dismissed it. I can’t even remember if I read it. I knew very little of the sinister world at large, and in my world the internet didn’t exist. I could conceive of societal over-management in a distant sort of way but I imagined that if a Big Brother kind of scenario ever came into play it would be recognizably science fiction. And it would, of course, be about a corrupt government. 

I was wrong about it all, and it seems I’m not alone. The world has gone beserk with the exposure of NSA privacy invasion, masses of people quoting George Orwell, predicting gloom and doom. Our independence is over; Big Brother Government controls your every move.  

There’s something perfectly Hollywood about it all. Cloak and dagger shadowy organizations, spies, international relations, diplomatic nightmares, global chases from the US to China to Russia to Havanna.

But the real Big Brother – or a fraternity of them – has been operating in our lives and homes for ages. They did what all exploiters do. Groomed us. Here, you can have this for free. We’re doing it because we love you. That how can we help you? transmogrified over time from into how can we exploit you and earn billions of bucks? We all found out about it and had a hissy fit. But we didn’t stop using those products. 

There’s nothing science fiction about it. Nothing out of the ordinary. Not anymore. Only because we’ve become slowly inured to how much of ourselves we give away, and now we're kind of hooked on the idea that unless everybody knows everything about us we’re alone and isolated. 

We still hold onto the concept of the value of privacy. But the reality of what preserving your privacy involves in today’s tech world - being cut off from some potential friend somewhere - scares us. We give ourselves away every second of the day because we somehow believe it’s the only way we can get more and more connected. There was a time when the idea of having having your privacy invaded made you feel naked. Now living in a cocoon where your privacy is utterly protected makes you feel exposed.

I read a great article on BuzzFeed/CNN, "10 ways you give up data without knowing it". It’s a kind of shortened Orwellian type of expose on privacy. I followed one of the links to a pretty detailed inventory of info about how advertisers on Facebook can manipulate their friends, friends of their friends, college students, different age groups, nationalities, genders, occupations, interests, you name it.  

It’s done in the form of Q & A and is of course selling Facebook advertising. Very seductive. If you’ve got something to sell that is. It's a bit of a shock if you're on the receiving end. Nowhere on the page could I see a question like do people supply this information willingly and knowingly? 

We still hold onto the Big Brother idea that it’s the government we have to worry about; that it will control us in a recognisably sinister and science-fiction kind of way. So when Edward Snowden exposes NSA surveillance information everybody throws up their hands in a riot of protest. We know what this is! But the mundane reality of it is that the NSA doesn’t analyse all the info in detail, they simply mine it for specific alerts. They sure don’t use it to manipulate citizens. And the point of it isn’t mass control, but to try and control terrorism. They don’t want to know every intimate detail about us; they want to know whether we know any terrorists or not. 

I guess we focus on the NSA as public enemy number one because the average Joe doesn’t think its work is useful. That’s because they’ve never had to personally pay for their security. The US – and its allies – have usually chosen the military option and most of the casualties have been suffered by the enemy.  

Now the US has a leader who seems hell-bent on peace and not war, but still remains realistically alert to security risks. The only problem with the choice he's put before US citizens is that the more peaceful solution requires them to pay something. For their own security benefits. Personally, given the choice between some innocent child getting its limbs blown off while I sleep peacefully at home, and having the NSA collect my data to see if I'm cavorting with terrorists, it's a no brainer. It’s hard for me to understand why everybody doesn’t clamour to make that same choice.

In real terms this NSA surveillance isn’t much of a payment, not if one is realistic about it. But in a world where media influence has blurred the lines between truth and lies, where politicians and giant corporations are expert fear-mongers, where we get our information from movies and TV series, realism isn’t a strong point. 

Meanwhile the real Big Brother fraternity continue to really control us more and more every day. They have the key to our lives and they can let anybody in to prowl around any time they like. Whether we know about it or not, whether we want it or not. Contrary to the NSA they do want to know intimate details about us; they target each of us very specifically. 

We know it's real, what Facebook and Google do. Why don't we rise up in global protest? Because they’re useful to us. When we advertise, do we care anymore what people have had to give up so we can get to them? Not really. So in fact, we welcome the Big Brother Frat with open arms. And while we’re waving our fists at a red herring that attracts us because of the drama, the real enemy is sucking the will-power out of us through a giant umbilical cord inserted into our Achilles heel.

If you want to opt out of being ad-targeted by Google, click here. To opt out of Facebook targeted ads close your account. Click here for their reasons why they need to continue with targeted advertising and can’t give you the option to opt out. It’s all about how much they love you and how can we help you? They focus on all the things they don’t do and deftly avoid the central question, which is Can I stop my personal and intimate information and that of my friends, my family, my children, being used by Facebook?

 

Because the unspoken answer is unapologetically and categorically No. 

Edward Snowden - How Much Does He Really Care About Citizen's Rights?

There are more than one ways to skin a cat. Oprah Winfrey once said she always wanted to be a star. Naturally she was drawn to Hollywood but she didn’t like what stars had to do to achieve fame. Nobody does, but some suck it up, believing they don’t have another option. Not Oprah. She chose another route and got nicely rewarded for that bit of lateral thinking.

What about Edward Snowden? Did he reveal US surveillance secrets for a noble cause? Was he a traitor to or a martyr for his country? He has denied that he’s either and insisted he’s just an ordinary guy wanting to protect ordinary Americans from their Big Brother nasty spying government.

Regardless of whether he’s succeeded in doing that or not and whether or not he actually believes his own motives to be pure, he’s created a diplomatic nightmare for the US, China and Russia and possibly even Eduador. More importantly, the choices he’s made since the revelation show him as not being so fundamentally noble after all.

In protecting Americans from having their privacy violated, Snowden chose to seek asylum first in a country with horrific human rights and gargantuan freedom of speech violations. Granted Hong Kong has autonomy but it answers to the Chinese government, which Snowden has got to have known, given the work he did. 

China didn’t want him and he’s been neatly shuffled out of Hong Kong. Under the pretext of the arrest warrant not being properly filled out, which allegedly left the Hong Kong authorities no option but to let him go. The US and Hong Kong are huffing and puffing at each other, but the reality is, they’ve neatly averted a situation that would impede the trade relationship they’re both trying to build. Ironically, they both cyber-spy on each other and they both know they do. It’s unlikely China would want somebody like Snowden in the country.

From China, it was onto Russia. Another country whose human rights record is atrocious and where freedom of speech is severely curtailed. A country whose leader supports Bashar Al-Assad. Nice work, Snowden.

They apparently don’t want him either. Putin has been accused of taking pleasure in sticking his middle finger up at the US for even allowing Snowden into the country without a passport, but he’s just stuck in a transit lounge at the airport. That’s a pretty clear message from Putin. I doubt he has feelings of affection for Snowden who has put him in a right spot. Obviously he doesn’t want to wave that finger too close to the US nose, otherwise he would have granted Snowden asylum. But officially ganging up against him would discredit him with his voters.

He chose a pretty wise diplomatic option. A kind of halfway measure that lets him off the hook in both directions. He’s no fool, Putin. So it’s on to Ecuador for Snowden.

Which has defamations provisions in its criminal code that allow the government to persecute its critics. In 2011 journalist Emilio Palacio wrote an opinion piece in El Universo in which he accused Ecuadorean President Correa of being a dishonest dictator. Correa sued Palacio and three of the newspaper’s board members, brothers Carlos Eduardo Pérez Barriga, César Enrique Pérez Barriga, and Carlos Nicolás Pérez Barriga. They were jailed with 3 year sentences and ordered to pay $40 million in fines altogether.

In an interview with The Guardian, where Snowden talked about his motives, he said "I don't want to live in a society that does these sorts of things..." Really? China, Russia and Ecuador don't do these sort of things?  

Predictably, Jullian Assange and his lawyers and friends were behind getting Snowden out of Hong Kong and attempting to get him asylum in Ecuador. Whether it’ll work or not is debatable. Assange is still holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he’s been for almost a year. He’s obviously not that bothered about freedom of speech in Ecuador either. 

You can’t tell much about a person from what they say. You can’t even always tell who they are from what they do, especially in the beginning, when the ramifications of their behaviour haven’t kicked in. But you can tell a lot from the company they keep. That Assange and Snowden happily accept help from countries with atrocious human rights and freedom of speech violations  makes a mockery of the cloak of nobility they wear as whistle-blowers hell-bent on protecting everybody’s freedom.

Google's New Search Tools Invade Your Privacy Even More

Once again Google has been working hard to do us all a favor – this time to save us the time and energy of thinking for ourselves. They’ve introduced new search tools, which, when you ask a question, predict what your next question will be and give you the answer to that too. They already do it, but they've refined it now. None of this of course allows for any original thinking and is predicated on the assumption that we’re all the same.

So Jack, who lives in LA, has a wife and two children, is an upper middle income architect who owns his own home, may ask Google how to bake a chocolate cake. I might ask the same question. I’m not an architect, I don’t live in LA and I don’t have two children or a wife. Will Google know the difference between us? If we’ve both got gmail accounts it might, because its algorithms mine the information in everybody’s gmail correspondence, and blogger blogs. From which a profile is created that’s updated every second you’re blogging or corresponding with somebody via gmail. Probably via other email hosts as well. It’s common knowledge that Google will commit dirty deeds if it can get away with it.

I Googled the question ‘how do I bake chocolate cake’ just to see the results. Can’t do any comparing here since I don’t know a Jack from LA. Google’s search results on the first page are all about, yes, baking a chocolate cake. Down at the bottom of the page, I see ‘how to bake a chocolate cornflake cake’ ‘no bake chocolate cake’. Clearly Google thinks I love cornflakes and don’t really like baking.

For now it’s just guesswork, but when that tool kicks in… And people are worried about big government big brother tactics? Big government has nothing on Google. Unless of course – OMG – Google is big government. Which isn't as absurd as you'd hope it would be given how much influence corporate interest has on state policies the world over.

Google’s PR drive with their new tools is that they’re helping people to become smarter. By spoonfeeding them information they haven’t directly asked for. What an absurd rationale. Ironically, big brother tactics by governments actually promote entitlement empowerment, because people have to think for themselves to find ways to elude being spied on. And they do. And they protest, and communicate with each other, and use their brains in all sorts of creative ways. But Google’s so-called ‘empowerment tool’ is a way of deadening people’s capacity for creative thinking altogether. 

But then that’s marketing for you. Extraordinary understanding of psychology they have - to be able to create an image of themselves as being heavily invested in individuality and creativity. Mind you, maybe they don't have such a great understanding after all. There’s one enormous aspect of being human that they've overlooked. Or just don't know anything about because - well, because they're all clones. It's that some people can actually think for themselves. For myself I’m happy to say, what Google never gets is that I don’t give a damn darling about affiliate marketers’ versions of how to bake a chocolate cake, or their cheap diversionary attempts to draw me to another site trying to sell me something that has nothing to do with chocolate cake. 

Nor does Google take into account that when I want to know something I know how to ask the specific question, and I don’t like somebody trying to predict what I want or what I need. In fact, I'm likely to discount any of those results out of pure annoyance.

And all the work they put into creating a profile they can market to is a waste of time, since I ignore all advertising. If I want to buy something I look for it. They're welcome to try and use that info against me, but it will never work. Furthermore, if what Google gives me doesn't meet my need I'll get frustrated with Googledom and try another route altogether. I guess they could start putting anarchistic sites in front of me. Which could lead to being targetting by gun dealers and right wing organizations. Then the FBI and the CIA could get wind of me and arrest me and… 

I wonder if there’s an architect named Jack living in LA, with two kids and a wife who’s thinking along the same lines as I am? Catch us if you can, Google. And here's a recipe that will never bake: Google + respect for the right to privacy.