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‘Terms and Conditions May Apply,’ documentary shown | December 26, 2017 The 2013 documentary film, “Terms and Conditions May Apply,” will be shown free at 7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 5, at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 21 Fairground Road in Springfield, Vermont. Filmmaker Cullen Hoback that exposes what corporations and governments learn about people through internet and cell phone usage, and what can be done about it, if anything. Doors open at 6:45 p.m. Popcorn and hot beverages will be served. All are welcome. Shown in a still from the documentary, Hoback (left) interviews Max Schrems, an Austrian law student and activist.
Make no mistake, Big Brother IS WATCHING. No joke, everything you say or do on your computer or smart phone is being monitored and recorded, AND WILL BE USED AGAINST YOU! If you think I'm being paranoid, ask yourself, "How do they know what kind of ads to run?" It's NOT being done for your benefit!
ReplyDeleteBack when I was on the Board of the Springfield Prevention Coalition, "media literacy" was a hot topic. The heart of the message was, "Media is the ocean, you are the fish. Is the ocean polluted?" SPC educates the 5-25 population on substance abuse, tobacco use and prescription medication abuse. Media literacy looks at how commercial media shapes our perceptions of ourselves.
ReplyDeleteThe core of every commercial ad is, "I'm beautiful; you're ugly. Buy this." As a result, our kids (and we as well) are subjected to over 3,000 ads a day. (Some of the ads are minimal, such as the tag on a pair of Levi's). Every one of them reminds us of the core message: I'm ugly. And that's the ocean we fish swim in.
Corporations do this because they make money, and the system is set up so that they are rewarded for making more and more money. Which is why 8:18's warning is germane. Because they can make even more money, they will buy every bit of information about you that they can get, and they hire programmers to write apps that will get their message to you based on the data they bought.
One famous example was when Target received a letter from a very irate father. "You sent my daughter coupons for baby products! She's only sixteen!" he fumed.
Target's marketing department had developed an algorithm which generated coupon mailings targeted to customers based on what they had clicked on at websites. A certain demographic that clicked on such things as, say, fuzzy toys, nausea medications and romance novels was composed of pregnant women. The 16-year-old had clicked on those things, so she got the coupons.
A couple of months later her father found out she was pregnant.
Target obviated the parental irritation issue by henceforth including non-pregnancy-related coupons with the rest.
But if you use gmail, Google will use the words in your messages to deliver related ads to the websites you visit. Perhaps others do as well. Test it by claiming to have a medical condition, say, "restless leg syndrome" in an e-mail, and see if ads for the medications start showing up.
It's not Big Brother; it's the system.
You want to see the movie, "The Corporation."
Even if you don't have a gmail account, if you email with anyone who does the Google claims that content as their property. Be especially wary of "free" things from giant corporations, like gmail, Facebook, etc. I worry about Vermontel, though theoretically they don't deal your info. The "Internet of Things" is another huge data mine. So is going to be "self-driving cars". Does it matter really? I don't know, but the idea bothers me.
DeleteBig Brother, "the system," what's the difference? Edward Snowden proved they're one and the same. I have a book entitled "Databanks in a Free Society." It states that EVERYONE in America is on at least 72 databases. IT WAS PUBLISHED IN 1974!!!!
DeleteAbout 10 years ago I was having lunch at work in town, checking online news as I ate. I'd gotten a diet soda from the vending machine, and got curious about how much caffeine it contained. The can label didn't say, but it did have some fine print saying if I had any questions, I could go to www.dietcoke.com. So, I went there. They had a contact procedure there to send them a question, so I filled out their form, including my name and work email address, asking how much caffeine in a can of diet coke.
DeleteA few days later, I got a sorta reply. It was an email that said thank you for the inquiry, and they valued me greatly, and they would respond to my question soon. The email was sent to my home (in town) email address, not my work address. The salutation of the email specified my father, who used to own the house, not me (and he never used email.) I never did get an answer to my question at any address. Apparently everything I put on the form was dropped - or - changed.
So yeah, obviously several databases were accessed by some software to send me a meaningless reply, but it was all mixed up. The database system that has everything about us in multiple places is all screwed up. This isn't really a surprise; I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad one: probably both.
The Coca-Cola company may have screwed up, but there are other entities that don't. My point is that corporations and the government have been amassing data on us for decades. In 1974, it was 72 databases, today maybe 72,000? For those who use social media it's worse. They know more about us than we know about ourselves. What truly scares me is how young people embrace this technology, seemingly without question. I used to know survivalists who spoke of "getting off the grid." The truth is, I don't think it's possible anymore. Happy New Year!
DeleteOne thing the "young" may not realize is that everything they put into cyberspace stays in cyberspace. And that when seeking future employment, the company's HR department can look into, for instance, their FB history.
DeleteHopefully my tinfoil hat helps...
DeleteStephen Hawking's latest "prediction" for the future of the planet is grim. One is that artificial intelligence will begin to dominate and "run out of control" another will be caused by the Donald and his ignorance about the EPA. And there are other things. ...
ReplyDeleteAI cannot dominate us until it can reproduce autonomously. This means not only the algorithms, but the physical structures that can make algorithm reproduction possible. So, for example, it would call for a 3D printer to build chips and computers, manufacturing capabilities to build 3D printers, power for those capabilities and so on down the whole stack of turtles.
ReplyDeleteWhat is far more likely to work is a small group of humans who manipulate the vast majority into providing the conditions needed for AI to dominate. Is this possible?
Then why does this blog ask If You Are A Robot? Apparently robots are out there waiting to write something "intelligent".
DeleteWell, the FCC just ended network neutrality after weeks of receiving floods of e-mails asking them to end it. And now we're finding out that there is probably a robo-email attack responsible for it. Who said what they write has to be "intelligent"?
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