Built to watch you
Today, the idea that surveillance is something that was added onto the internet after the fact is a common belief.
But it’s not true, it was baked in from the very start. It emerged from military efforts to build computer systems for a world where everyone was surveilled, predicted and controlled. US intelligence was already using it to help them spy on civil rights activists in the 1970s1.
When Google and other big tech companies track and profile their users today, it's simply the system doing what it was always designed to do. Google's advertising model, for example, is built on exactly the same logic as those early systems: collect as much data as possible (your Gmail inbox says hi), find patterns, predict behaviour.
So should we all delete our accounts, move to a cabin in the mountains, and start growing our own vegetables?
Of course not (well, unless cabin life is your thing). But widespread acceptance doesn't make something inevitable. Better, more ethical alternatives exist, and in many cases they're just as good, if not better.
More on this in the next email…
Colin
[1] See the book “Surveillance Valley” by Yasha Levine for the full history.