Cloud control
Cookies may sound cute, but the power of databases and their ever-increasing intrusion into our lives is a cause for serious alarm, writes Mark Barnes
Ican scarcely touch my phone without being told that where I’m going, or what I’m looking for, is in a place where they use cookies (whatever those are). I’m then asked whether I’m happy with that, or whether I’d like to manage it, or would I like to see their “cookie policy”. I always respond “no thanks” (because I’m on diet — trying to get back to 36 from 38, and cookies are strictly forbidden), and that’s where the engagement usually ends.
Even if I finally get into a site, or a tweet, or a source to which I subscribe, the real information is spread out over many scrolldowns, with the advertisements taking up more space than the story.
Fair enough, you might say, somebody has to pay for the production of all the information, and that’s what the advertising revenue does. Like it or not, the adverts will appear and, as much as you try to ignore them, some subliminal messages will get through, which may persuade you to buy, or do, something. Mission accomplished. But this is only level one intrusion.
At the next level, my interest is sought on either broad topics or specific interests, directly, personally. Worse still (level three) I get called directly, by a machine or a person addressing me by my first name, on terms as familiar as if we’d been at school together, wanting to sell me something.
Beyond these, involuntary engagements outside my contact base get a little more sinister. As I engage with previously used service providers, I get told what I’m looking for, where I want to go and where I am. If I click on Uber at about 4.30 on a Friday afternoon, it’ll presume I’m heading to the (pre-lockdown) bar I once went to.
Finally, one of my best is when someone has called me from an institution I know (like a bank) and requires me to verify who I am by providing such details as my ID or mobile number (having just called me on it?!) but refuses to verify who they might be with similar reciprocal information.
All of this brews a strange concoction of knowing about, tracking, and getting messages to me which are uninvited, if not downright intrusive.
I recently bought a couple of small tracking devices you can attach to your keys, say, and then you can find them, 24/7, using an app. Useful, sure, but also mis-useful. I could easily drop one of these, unnoticed, into someone’s handbag, briefcase, car or shopping bag and follow their whereabouts without either their knowledge or permission. All of this may seem harmless enough in the right hands, with the right intentions. But if databases can find me, knowing only my mobile number, then it’s only a matter of time before we’ll also be able to track, predict and explore each other without permission. I think that has serious psychological and behavioural consequences.
I’m not just thinking about silly things, like naughty pictures shared between consenting adults, or forwarded jokes that may be politically incorrect. What about private conversations or valid secrets, or inside information, or … whatever you have on your device, which is simply nobody else’s business.
We behave differently when we’re on show, that’s just human nature. You’d better believe you are on show, you just can’t be sure who’s watching, friend or foe.
At some point when you’re playing to this multifaceted ether audience you may cross the line of being the real you, into being the person you’d like to be, or they’d like you to be (often not the same person). At some point, this live, real-time behaviour moves from being appearance management to deceit. At some point, information and misinformation cannot be distinguished. At some point, curiosity is invasion. At some point, revelation is malicious.
Most of us adults are either mature enough to deal with this stuff (once you know it’s happening), or our lives are simply too ordinary to be of any real interest to strangers or data repositories, evil or virtuous. Be that as it may, we still have the right to be intact, private and insulated from any unwelcome surveillance or engagement, unless we forfeit that right by breaking the law.
Our mobile-carrying, techno-infested children are most definitely not equipped to deal with these forces. For their sakes at least, there should be some “by invitation only” filters on our devices and cloud connections, and we should be able to change our minds about who’s allowed in or not, as often as we like, for as long as we like.
Although society is ultimately the sum of its constituent individuals, the individual must remain forever sacrosanct and untampered with, lest we all become a universally acceptable, impotent average that is the lowest controllable common denominator among us. More and more robots, controlled by fewer and fewer humans. Watch out.