Re: nettime [ICTs-and-Society] Blogpost about Google’s “New“ Terms of Use and Privacy Policy: Old Exploitation and User Commodification in a New Ideological Skin
Hi Christian, Thank you for sending this blog post. I think providing Google's new policies within the context of EU regulation is particularly helpful. In a globally networked world, the multi-jurisdiction that online services face is both a challenge for companies and an opportunity to push for more user control over the online public sphere. However, I would like to push back against a couple notions in your piece. First, much like television or radio has been supported by advertising, so too are many online services. The question we are grappling with is not whether or not the service is supported by advertising but what are reasonable limits on the use of personally identifiable information for advertising. Secondly, opt-out is technically an option, but from a behavioral economics standpoint has much higher costs than most users will chose. The question is really about what types of controls should be available for users. With respect to Google's recent change, you are absolutely correct in noting the large-scale economic surveillance of users, after all, Google is essentially an advertising company and earns 97%http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/07/google-revenue-sources/of revenue from advertising, but it is worth defining that transaction. First, Google profits from serving adds to users and naturally would profit more from offering more effective advertising. However, Google is also potentially provides a better product to consumers by tailoring services. For example, if I am able to use Google search to more quickly access the information I want then I am more likely to use Google as my primary search engine. Another example would be location based data from a mobile device allowing location based services, such as locating me on a map, or to use Google's example, telling me that I am 15 minutes away from a meeting that starts in 15 minutes. In this two-sided market we have two clear values of user data. First, user data can lead to tailored serves. Secondly, user data can also provide better tailored advertisements. Both support the service, as one can lead to more user value while the other provides more value per user to Google. Essentially, user data is the currency that supports the transaction to otherwise free services online. Now lets look at Google's new policy. They are simplifying 60 services into a single privacy policy while at the same time noting that they will be sharing data between various Google services. This is Google's eclosion - their transition from a variety of different services that share a log-in, yet have at times have different data collection, into a single integrated service. Most notably, this will mean the sharing of data between Google's web history and YouTube history which is significant because Google is the largest search engine and the largest video hosting website in the world. From my conversations with Google staff, I have confirmed that this step will not include combining DoubleClick data. (In fact, this would be in violation of a Federal Trade Commission order here in the U.S.) From a business standpoint, this transition makes sense. Two of Google's major competitors are striving for integrated experiences. Apple offers a vertically integrated experience on iOS devices and is pushing the same App store restrictions onto OSX computers through Gatekeeperon the next version of their operating system. Facebook is pushing to create the next generation of the online portal - the very same that was rejected in the 90s - by offering applications and media within Facebook. However, by integrating a like button on a large number of websites, Facebook has also made a major play to collect user data on user web browsing. Google has responded to this competitive threat through their +1 button (which offers the same web browsing tracking as the like button) as well as the intent to transition into a company that offers an integrated experience. The commercial pressures of the online marketplace are to maximize, as you say, economic surveillance and Google's new policy is a clear intent to become underlying platform through which users interact with other online content. As I arguehttp://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/02/google_privacy_policy_the_missing_opt_out_isn_t_the_only_problem_.htmlwith my colleague Thomas Gideon, the problem here is not whether or not Google offers an opt-out. After all, saying users must accept new policies or choose another service is a bully's pulpit. Even though Google offers the ability to download all your data and leave (although this is a commendable step considering the other players in the space) users have considerable sunk costs in users log-ins for YouTube, email, and other Google services. Additionally, once you log into a single Google service you are automatically logged into other services - it is entirely unreasonable to expect that someone will be chatting or emailing in one window and
nettime Historical handshakes confirming Oil Ententes of the Elysée with Libya and Syria 2007 – 2009
Historical handshakes confirming Oil Ententes of the Elys?e with Libya and Syria 2007 ? 2009 March 1, 2012 by Tjebbe van Tijen The full illustrated and documented version with web links can be found at: http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/historical-handshakes-confirming-oil-ententes-of-the-elysee-with-libya-and-syria-2007-2009/ [tableau with Sarkozy shaking hands with Gaddafi (2007) and Assad (2009) on the steps of the Elys?e] [visual statistics on oil production and oil export of Libya and Syria, with the caption: The backdrop of the policy for Libya and Syria by European Union and associated NATO countries is always painted with oil. (1) British/Dutch Royal Dutch Shell, French Total, CNPC from China and ONGC of India are main investors in Syrian crude oil and gas. (2) 13 November 2009 humanitarian oil diplomacy by Assad, the other way around: ?I asked President Sarkozy to interfere as to stop the daily killing of the Palestinians by the Israel Army,? said H.E. President Al-Assad citing today?s killing of a Palestinian citizen. (3) ] [news photograph of Al-Assad delevring a speech at the Elys? in Paris in 2009, with this caption: His Excellency President Al-Assad described his talks with President Sarkozy as 'very successful'', 'constructive'' ''transparent'' and as ''bolstering the confidence built between Syria and France'', ''dealing with many international as well as regional issues, bilateral relations, the Iranian nuclear file, the recent positive developments in Lebanon, particularly following the formation of the Lebanese Government, which we expect to be an important step for the stability in Lebanon.'' (...) ''The talks, further, dealt with the situation in Gaza from a human perspective; I asked President Sarkozy to interfere as to stop the daily killing of the Palestinians by the Israel Army,'' said H.E. President Al-Assad citing today's killing of a Palestinian citizen.] ?? discovery of treasure, a huge oil and gas in the basin of the Mediterranean is estimated reserves to 122 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 107 billion barrels of oil.? [map of oil concessions in Syria with this caption: SYRIAN OIL AND GAS NEWS: Announcement for International Offshore Bid Round 2011 Category: Oil Ministry Decisions Declarations | Posted on: 30-03-2011 The Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources and General Petroleum Corporation (GPC) invite international petroleum companies for an International Bid Round to explore, develop and produce petroleum from three offshore blocks in some areas of the territorial waters and the exclusive economic zone of the Syrian Arab Republic in the Mediterranean Sea according to the production sharing contract.The announcment contains three marine areas ( block I, block II, blockIII) with covarage area estemated by 3000 cubic kilometers per one block. the annoncement date starts in 24/3/2011 for six monthes and closed on 5/10/2011.The modern American studies recently confirmed the discovery of treasure, a huge oil and gas in the basin of the Mediterranean is estimated reserves to 122 trilli on cubic feet of natural gas and 107 billion barrels of oil. (4)] ?? (1) oilprice.com 14/4/2011: ?Oil Production Figures in Areas of Unrest (Middle East North Africa)? (2) royaldutrchshellplc.com 3/12/2011: ?E.U. sanctions force Shell to leave Syria.? (3) www.presidentassad.net: Presidents Al-Assad/ Frnace visit statements (13/11/2009) (4) Syrian Oil and Gas News; 8/2/2010:International announcement for developing 7 oil field in Arraqah Posted in European politics, Africa, Middle East, news-tableau | Tagged Bashar al-Assad, human rights, Nicolas Sarkozy, Colonel Gaddafi (1942-2011), Oil Entente, State visit Al Assad to France 2009, State visit Colonel Gaddafi to France 2007, oil export Libya, oil export Syria # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
nettime Political-Economy and Desire
Folks: In preparation for some work on the impact of digital technology on political-economy, I have been re-reading Mandeville, Smith, Maltham, RIccardo and others (including various commentators like Marx) to try to sort out what *assumptions* were made about humans in the beginning of this inquiry. As many know, the overwhelming issue they were dealing back then with was passion and, in various ways, how to relate an economy which was driven by passion with earlier notions of morality. (Btw, the notion that human economic activity is somehow rational was not prominent among their assumptions and, from what I can tell, didn't actually take hold in economics until it was proposed by those like Herb Simon in the 1960s, who, arguably, were really promoting artificial intelligence and had to somehow fit computers without desires into their schema.) Perhaps most famously, Bernard de Mandeville's 1705 The Grumbling Hive: or Knaves turn'd Honest and his 1714 The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefit lays out an early version for what today we might call the commodification of desire. The 300 year-long result of the changes chronicled by the early political-economists was global Industrialism (aka Capitalism?) and an apparently endless parade of large-scale production/consumption -- which, while certainly relying on a stream of technologies, was also fundamentally based on a revolution in moral sentiments. Yes, it is important that this result has greatly increased the world's population, life-expectancy and overall living standards -- including in places that industrialized but would not typically be called capitalist. What I'm wondering is if any contemporary political-economists have re-appraised the topic of desire and asked the question if one ever gets to the situation where enough is enough? Is there a limit to desire? If so, then what are the political-economic implications of changing that assumption about economic behavior? And, have any come to the conclusion that *yes* some have already passed that point in a meaningful way -- so that they are now living in a post-desire economy? The assumption most in the public sphere seem to make is that endless economic growth should be expected since the economy is endlessly driven by insatiable desires. Or, alternately, if economic growth isn't possible (even taking into account population growth), then we still need to satisfy those expanding desires some other way -- typically by redistributing what we already have. But is that a reasonable starting assumption -- specifically regarding endless growth in *desire* driving economic growth? Clearly, pre-capitalist society didn't work that way. Are the usual explanations (lack of technology, scarcity, etc.) -- particularly when presented by those who *assume* endless growth in desire -- credible? Indeed, why should post-capitalist society work that way? A related question: what happens to consumption (and growth) when an economy shifts from material goods to services (as some economies did when the term post-industrial was coined in the 1950s)? Moreover, what happens when an economy shifts to information (as some economies did when it became commonplace to refer to living in the information age)? Do people ever have enough stuff? And, is that the same question as can people ever have enough love? Enough sex? Enough excitement? Enough attention? Enough information? Most importantly -- do assumptions about human nature originally made in the 17th/18th century still apply today? Mark Stahlman Brooklyn NY # distributed via nettime: no commercial use without permission # nettime is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
Re: nettime The $100bn Facebook question: Will capitalism survive 'value abundance'?
Brian writes: For years I have been dismayed by a very common refusal to think. The dismaying part is that it's based on the work of European history's greatest political philosopher, Karl Marx. It consists in the assertion that social media exploits you, that play is labor, and that Facebook is the new Ford Motor Co. I'm not actually sure that saying people are refusing to think by disagreeing with you, is the best way of approaching the question. We could easily and shallowly argue that the idea that Facebook is a sponser of creativity and communication, that only incidently profits off the service it offers, is also a refusal to think. Certainly it is what facebook might like us to think.. To me, the problem is the complexity of what is to be thought, and a general refusal to allow paradox - ie that something can be both good and bad, that it can have contradictory drives - to exist within the same thought. Thus is it not possible that facebook, and others, both exploits free labour and provides something that enables people to do something of their own? Why do we have to ultimately say it is just one or the other? Free labour itself is a complicated idea, perhaps descending from Toffler's idea of the 'prosumer', the fact that we all do work nowadays which used to be somebody's paid labour - such as filling a petrol pump, checking out goods in a store etc etc. Thus we all provide free labour, and that is now part of the structure of contemporary capitalism. It may or may not generate unemployment or free people of boring jobs - which ever you like - it certainly cuts costs for business and increases profits and upper management salaries. It has drives in both directions, but it would not seem to be something entirely outside of exploitation. Now, there are all kinds of things wrong with social media, and I don't even use it. But even I can recognize that it doesn't exploit you the way a boss does. But a boss is not the only form of exploitation, and indeed we could argue that in contemporary capitalism, your direct boss may also be exploited, even though they might think they are working 80 hours a week because they want to get ahead or something. Again the relation is complex. Perhaps a better way of expressing the facebook relation is tribute. Like you farm and give a certain percentage of your income to the Lord, because he enables you to farm - in theory. Facebook provides the farm, and skims off some money you never knew you had produced. It emphatically _does_ sell statistics about the ways you and your friends and correspondents make use of your human faculties and desires, to nasty corporations that do attempt to capture your attention, condition your behavior and separate you from your money. In that sense, it does try to control you and you do create value for it. Yes. Yet that is not all that happens. Because you too do something with it, That is not all that happens in a workplace either. We party, have love affairs, rivalries, express ourselves, sometimes sell results of our labour elsewhere and so on. Are people at google not wage labourers even with the beanbags, free form spaces, and day a week to officially do something interesting? The peasants under their lord also have fun days as well. But this might not mean that zero exploitation exists. something of your own. The dismaying thing in the theories of playbour, etc, is that they refuse to recognize that all of us, in addition to being exploited and controlled, are overflowing sources of potentially autonomous productive energy. By criticising facebook for 'exploiting' people and for enabling certain forms of contact, and restricting other forms of contact, what is precisely being recognised is that people have productive energy. No business could survive without people's productive energy. The whole point of a 'business organisation' is to harness as much of that creative and productive capacity for its own ends, and to make its ends the ends of the workers. If those workers don't get paid for it, all the better, as far as management and ownership is concerned. The business enables people to survive and produce things; it also exploits them. The refusal to think about this - a refusal which mostly circulates on the left, unfortunately - leaves that autonomous potential unexplored and partially unrealized. Not in my opinion, it recognises the difficulties faced for autonomous potential... Can we have an autonomous potential in any case? To me sounds like a potential outside of society, outside of organisation, or the interplay of chaos and structure. So again facebook might be good or bad. anyway, just some non-thinking. jon UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F DISCLAIMER: This email message and any accompanying attachments may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message or
