where to hide in the age of 'surveillance capitalism'

They all prey upon us, poor sitting ducks

Grim-faced under a hoodie (1), tapping nervously on the keyboard while watching intently what’s happening on the screen, I might resemble a hacker. But I ‘m merely a hapless computer user who is on high alert while setting up a new device (2).

One might naively assume that having acquired and duly paid for a new piece of hardware with accompanying software, one can insouciantly click through the standard set-up procedure.

But no, commercial harassment (3) is now hard coded into every device right from the start.  If you don’t pay attention the provider can share your data with X, Y and Z to sell you better services and products and blablabla.  And your device’s default browser comes of course pre-equipped with unwanted gaudy news-sites and commercial links.  Etc Etc

One might also naively assume that buying a premium anti-virus license, means you have a security provider who is henceforth on your side, defending your interests in the digital jungle. But no, also this paid-for anti-virus software does not miss an occasion to send various alarming messages only to persuade you to buy yet another multi-year subscription to yet another module you don’t really need. 

And when we go on-line, then of course we all know that really anything goes and no holds are barred.  From commercial tech firms to digital criminals, they all prey upon us, poor sitting ducks, from the moment we switch on our tech device and connect to the web. (4)  Let’s be clear, it’s not the technology as such which is stressful, it’s the whole commercially exploitative environment around it that is so disheartening.

Looking for safer spaces ... 

 By contrast …. ah, by contrast… Have you ever realised what a precious, disinterested realm you enter when reading a good book? For instance a lovingly researched art history book.  You can sit quietly with this book – leafing through it, reading, looking at pictures, thinking, … Nobody is preying on you! Nobody is tracking or trapping you! Within the covers of the book, nobody is trying to sell anything. The book is yours forever, on your own terms of engagement.  

And the book’s content, ah … the content … It has not been selected or engineered by an algorithm maximising and exploiting your attention for some product placement (5).  No, usually there has been an earnest writer at work, eg an art historian, who has done long and patient research, and then in turn tries to explain her insights to the reader. A writer who may actually love his subject, who may try to convey a genuine passion.  What a blessing indeed, to spend time, slow time, your own time, with a book that is only there to share knowledge and beauty.

Who knows, we may still witness a revival of the paper book, when too many people will have become exhausted and disgusted by the rowdy, always-on, always-being-tracked commercial hell which the digital world alas has become.

 

tracking notes instead of cookies

1.  hoodies are so handy to keep warm in times of energy wars, while sitting still in front of the computer 
2.  Not a new device because the old one failed (it’s running nicely with plenty of memory and remaining hard disk space) but because the near-monopolist Operating System provider keeps pushing menacing messages warning about the end of times (ie end of service cycle with security updates), insisting on the need to buy a new computer with the latest operating system.
3.  a commercial harassment to which one has alas become so accustomed when surfing the web, using social media, consulting on-line information. We all know today’s web services’ business model is one of free services in exchange for our data and for our attention to commercial messages.  But even providers of paid-for goods and services are now joining the race to aggressively squeeze as much as possible economic return from their unlucky captive customers.  “post-purchase monetisation” it is called.   Shoshana Zuboff wrote about it in great detail in “The age of surveillance capitalism”
4.  This is not a techno-phobe complaint  - the technology is impressive, its possibilities are exhilarating. But it’s the business model, or even the entire mind set,   of the on-line world, which reduces us to a bunch of sitting ducks.  Who doesn’t think back with longing to the good old early days of the internet, when disinterested communities and websites sprang up, when you could connect with people, find high quality information and educational resources, … ach.  II’s of course also our own collective fault – there is no such thing as a free lunch, and collectively we have ensured the failure of the earlier business models based on premium subscriptions, donations etc.  But maybe the non-mainstream digital world can still recover this better version of the digital world?
5. Just chronicling the latest harassment: Instagram aping TikTok, so you now have to wade through a heap of unsolicited silly video stuff and you can no longer just follow people you find interesting.  What ìs this obsession of our age with video? Is it a question of a collective horror of stillness, a variant of horror vacui?
6. But thank you Alphabet-Google, for your gracious free offer of Blogger! I wonder which data of mine were suited for monetisation?   

While Relishing Random Gifts

 

There are many good reasons to no longer write lengthy blogposts.

For one, they are not 15secs videos, so where’s the fun for the scrolling audience? Two, there’s  a war going on in Europe. Three, there are famines threatening in the world.  Four, this planet needs to be saved from climate change. Five, I’ve more pressing private issues to deal with. 

But then again, there’s no harm either in blogging & meandering melancholy musings.

And, right now, instead of dissecting the many perils of the human condition, I feel the strange need to count my blessings – and to evoke some unexpected gifts of harmony.   

 1) The un-solicited emergence of lovely little purple flowers 

“la vie ne fait pas de cadeaux “ : very true indeed!  And yet, these lovely purple flowers just popped up like that, one morning, spreading  their joyous colour & smell all over the small and not particularly well tended front-garden of our building. 

 2)  Finding essential books one didn’t even know that existed

“Rien sans peine” : definitely!  But I was just absentmindedly browsing the shelves in the music section of my beloved second hand bookshop Pêle-Mêle, when, without any merit,  I stumbled upon two  books – each in their way perfect to deepen the insights of a devout albeit unschooled classical music lover.   A small pocket book in perfect condition by Aaron Copland (indeed, the composer!) :  “What to Listen for in Music”. And a beautifully edited art book about “Flemish Polyphony” by Ignace Bossuyt.      

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3)  An impromptu cello-concerto in the museum garden – by a future winner of the Queen Elisabeth competition

"There’s no such thing as a free lunch” :  undoubtedly! And yet. It was a sultry Sunday summer afternoon in June last year and we had gone for a stroll in the rose gardens of the Museum van Buuren. A woman asked whether we wanted to attend a cello-recital, for free? It was given by a young German-Korean cellist, who was exploring some of the historical surroundings of this music- loving queen who gave her name to an eminent musical competition.  Hayoung Choi’s playing was dazzling.  And on a Sunday morning one year later, scrolling through the news on my phone, I could nod with smug satisfaction: the rose-garden cellist won the 1^st prize of the Queen Elisabeth competition.      

4.      4)  “Incident at Saint Guidon” and an unforeseen city walk

The plan was to efficiently insert a medical examination in the midst of the day, with a well-timed metro trip up and down to the hospital, all without causing so much as a ripple in my work performance.  Well, that didn’t go according to plan – on the way back, after only 10 minutes, the metro halted and all travellers were kindly requested to leave the train: because of an incident at the St Guidon station all metro- traffic was stopped.  

Above the ground people scurried around in all directions, trying to board overflowing buses or hailing already occupied taxis.  Right.  But, that’s when a Flâneur gets going.   Sunny, sweltering hot streets, a walk of about 1.5hours to get back to work.  It’s an unexpected gift to  just walk and walk, along the busy Chaussée de Mons, alongside an unexpectedly peaceful park with children playing, crossing a pittoresque square with a church, slaloming though groups of boys hanging around in Kureghem, traversing the canal, walking past illegal workers gathering behind the Southstation, dodging frantic shoppers at the Place Louise, overtaking strolling dandy’s with nifty dogs along the Toison d’or, speeding up a little, and yes there’s the office building.      

 

5.      5)  Youthful energy in the metro at 7.10AM

“metro-boulot-dodo” – not an uplifting prospect, now that for 3 weeks I have to join the daily commuters to get my treatment in a hospital at the edge of Brussels.   Most people in the metro are rather subdued at this early hour. Looking around I see rows of people uniformly bent over their smartphones. Others are dozing off, like that young slender man, carefully dressed (with red  shoes, red belt and red shirt) snuggling up ever tighter in his corner.  The school-going youth though, bristles with energy. When a girl spots a friend in the next car, she grins & phones :  “look around you!!” , laughing out loud when the friends turns around , surprised. The friend comes over, and until the final metro-stop they sit side by side, grinning & chatting & beaming & oh so happy about their unexpected encounter. 

6.      6)  Greeted by a friendly face at the Erasmus-metro exit

When Ieaving the metro at the ‘Erasmus’ station, apprehensive about the first of 15 radiotherapy –sessions, there is a familiar face that greets me amidst the crowd of commuters. On a bill-board there is Vivian Maier, intently gazing  in her lens, happily capturing her reflection in a mirroring surface, hair unruly, behind her a non-descript building and dappled summer light through tree-leaves -  a joyous reflected self-portrait.  As un-connected & isolated as she may have been – here she is, so many years later, on another continent – on  bill-boards announcing an exhibition of her photos.   

Reflections on human influence

 

I was intending to write a blogpost about "paideia" or “humanitas” – in the sense of seeking individual ‘salvation’ not in material riches, but in an ideal of self-education, in order to participate (however modestly) to the best that human culture has produced.  I was going to reach back 2000 years to bolster my confidence in the relative permanence of this humanistic ideal.  

But I was distracted from my nostalgic musings by the red alert of the IPCC : “Human influence has warmed the climate at a rate that is unprecedented in at least  the last 2000 years.”

“Human influence has likely increased the chance of compound extreme events since the 1950s. This includes increases in the frequency of concurrent heatwaves and droughts on the global scale (high confidence); fire weather in some regions of all inhabited continents (medium confidence); and compound flooding in some locations (medium confidence).” (IPCC August 2021_ AR6 WGI – p41))

 

 May human ingenuity (technological, behavioral) now help us to mitigate our influence, and to adapt to its consequences, lest we turn into pillars of salt, gazing, transfixed, at the unfolding disaster.  

Splendour & Insecurity (1)

Through an open window a saxophone pleads wistfully – a sultry sound so well suited to the quiet streets of a city slowly emerging from its lockdown. This day in May feels like a lazy sweltering day in high summer. Restaurants & cafés are still closed – there are few cars. Some people are strolling about aimlessly, or sitting on benches, talking quietly (mostly keeping their distance and often wearing masks), or patiently queuing for a shop, forming lines of people standing still, at 1.5 metres apart. 

This Spring has been strangely splendid – pouring out sun light and bird song as never before, in a quieted down, limpid city.  This Spring has been strangely insecure, with a permanent sense of dread.  

The ever optimist and resolute colleague at work casually mentions at the end of a conference call on Friday “on attend les résultats du test pour ma mère – mas je ne pense pas que ce soit covid , ça fait déjà 3 semaines qu’elle traîne cette bronchite “.  And on Monday you hear her mother died in hospital.

The woman at the bakery shop is as friendly as ever, but she looks tired and her tone is subdued.  “it’s difficult, it’s very difficult – many of our clients are simply gone -  the students, the office workers buying sandwiches – they’re all gone now, at home.  On espère qu’ils vont revenir. On espère pouvoir tenir encore quelques mois”.

While the city slowed down, the parks were lavishly full - of the lushest greens and of so many people joyously skating, cycling, jogging.  And now, people are already eagerly returning to their lives after the easing of restrictions, enjoying whatever is again permitted. (as to myself, in a single week I happily managed to put in a visit, duly masked, to the bookshop, the classical music shop and the old masters museum).

But in the longer run,  frankly, I’ve no idea how fragile or how resilient “we” (our world, our generation, our society) will prove to be.

I don’t know whether history can be a guide here.  In art & music historical terms I‘ve always been astonished by the prevalence of hardship & pestilence in the most glorious art periods – perplexed by this enduring human capacity to paint, write, sculpt and compose works of lasting beauty amidst  plagues & wars & upheaval.  

Was it because the elite (patrons and artists) in those times were relatively shielded from hardship? Or was it rather because of their sheer helplessness in the face of disaster – they could not but  long for another world, they could not but believe  in transcendence, which made the pursuit of beauty and harmony (ad maiorem gloriam dei) worthwhile even (or especially) in the darkest circumstances. 

Our age is so different.  Perhaps we seek less solace in escapist flights of the mind, in creations of great beauty because we feel empowered to analyse and act rationally, because we trust in science and technology and entrepreneurship to improve our material lot.  Maybe, perhaps.

 Fragments from past months’ reading :  

1. The juxtaposition of “Splendour & Insecurity” (as hallmark of a sophisticated yet anguished civilisation) was found in Runciman’s book on Byzantine Style and Civilisation

2. From a book on Titian (Filippo Pedrocco)
« An awareness of impending death weighs heavily on the paintings Titian was working on in the summer of  1576, when Venice was devastated by a terrible plague which was to kill his favorite son Orazio [and himself]» 

3. From a book on Byzantium (Steven Runciman):
«There were ghastly visitations of the plague : the Black death in 1346 killed probably a third of the population of Constantinople.» 
«Against this background of foreign invasion and civil war, of plague and poverty there flourished in Constantinople a civilisation more brilliant than any that Byzantium had known before.» 

4. From a book on the Franco-Flemish Polyphonists (Paul Van Nevel)
« De pest richtte tussen 1438 en 1439 een ravage aan in de Kamerijkse gebieden, waar soms tot tachtig procent van de bevolking bezweek aan de epidemie. De beroemde polyfonist Jacob Obrecht stierf in 1505 onverwacht aan de pest, net als zijn collega Alexander Agricola. In Amiens, de hoofdstad van Picardië, moesten de kerkhoven uitgebreid worden, omdat ‘les gens se moeurent si soudainement comme du soir au matin et souvent plus tost ” » 


« The plague wreaked havoc in the Cambrian areas between 1438 and 1439, where sometimes up to eighty percent of the population succumbed to the epidemic. The famous polyphonist Jacob Obrecht died unexpectedly of the plague in 1505, just like his colleague Alexander Agricola. In Amiens, the capital of Picardy, the cemeteries had to be extended because “‘les gens se moeurent si soudainement comme du soir au matin et souvent plus tost ”»

Brussels Summer Summits

Queuing with my work-lunch-sandwich at the counter of the local supermarket, I’m browsing the “Summer-Bestsellers!”- rack next to the chewing gum and mobile pre-paid cards.  A title stands out amidst the cooking and fitness books : “l’étrange suicide de l’Europe” (“the strange death of Europe”) .  Another WWI book? No, a current affairs book, apparently, about the transformation of Europe through migration.  Leafing through the book, reading some paragraphs here & there, depression and guilt descend upon me.  I read how my generation of Europeans is “squandering the only home we Europeans have”, how we are betraying the world that has been bequeathed to us by our forebears.   Here and now in the local supermarket in this European neighbourhood of Brussels, however, the world still turns : the supermarket staff of various descent is as friendly and efficient as ever, around me the lively bustle of ambitious eurocrats, busy business people , excited  tourists and giggling teenagers  (all of various descents) belies any intimations of an imminent death. 

The early summerdays in Brussels are often filled with summits – this year we had the European migration summit, the NATO summit, … Summit-time means that streets are cordoned off and black limousines speed by,  enveloped in a continuous buzz of police sirens and flickering blue lights.  One of those barricaded hotels with VIP summit guests looks out over a square with a nice little park where I like to take my lunch break walks.   The little park is quite a way off from the North Station (“BXLS Calais”) where many migrants gather, hoping to catch a clandestine ride en route for the promised land (UK).  Nevertheless, in the little park, too, a few people have now taken up semi-permanent residence.  Each occupying separate corners. One has built a temporary home with cardboard under a tree - he mostly sleeps during the day. Another has chosen a bench - orderly stowing his possessions beneath it in the morning - at noon he often sits there reading.  In a single glance, a VIP guest standing at the hotel window could take in the European parliament in the distance and, almost under his or her nose, the park with its migrant residents.

Year-end readings

They’re haunting, Svetlana Alexievich’s interviews with people who endured the ethnic wars when the Soviet Union was falling apart. Haunting & disturbing, because it is recent history, because these are testimonies of individual people’s suffering, lacking the soothing distance of abstraction. 

In the chapter titled “On a time when anyone who kills believes they are serving God” – a woman relates the arrival of civil strife in Abkhazian:  how, all of a sudden Georgians and Abkhazians,  started to attack and kill each other. 

“They walk around like zombies, convinced that they are doing good”.  From one day to the other, neighbours, class mates, colleagues turned onto each other. “So fast! So inhumanly fast! Where has all this been lying dormant?“

 

(Svetlana Alexievich –  « Second-Hand Time»)

The 7^th century, by contrast, is far away.  History becomes less personal then.  However vivid Wim Jurg’s account of that turbulent era, however evocative his descriptions of the feuding & the warring – empathy is (mercifully) not called upon.  

But one acquiesces with weary pessimism when he paraphrases a 7^th century poet commenting on the first Arab civil war:   

“one person hates another and believes that is religion. When they accuse us, we accuse them, when they tell bad things about us, we tell bad things about them”

(Wim Jurg – « De lange zevende eeuw »)

And the present?  Is it represented by the breaking news on new year’s day?  By the terrorist attack on a new year’s party?