Eden

[no comment, for purposes of minimal labouring/#data gifting]

#dataaslabour

Aug 20, 2018 at 2:10pmWeb
Show threadEdenAug 20, 2018

okay okay, maybe i need to say a bit more about this. basically - surveillance capitalism is bad, and the platform economy that is increasingly dominant is bad new. BUT i don't think data is labour. maybe I'm wrong though?!?

#dataaslabour

Show threadEdenAug 20, 2018

undoubtedly, companies and even states can exert control through their access to and even ownership of our data, but are we 'enslaved' by this? i think it certainly can become dangerous + limiting, but not sure the rhetoric of slavery is right, and 'labour' certainly feels wrong

#dataaslabour

Show threadEdenAug 20, 2018
full disclosure: i have not and cannot read this full article because it requires me to have a membership to access the full text, and to access the text i have to give Medium my data lol. but even if this is a form of currency/capital (??) i still don't think it's 'labour'???
Show threadEdenAug 20, 2018

but again, i'm not an expert, hell, i haven't even read Das Kapital, so perhaps i'm not the best person to ask about this, and i would also genuinely be interested in other people's thoughts.

#dataaslabour #DasKAPITAL

Show threadEdenAug 20, 2018
also idek if this attempt at #threading on @mastoden works?? i am v new to it all and v uninitiated.
Show threadTerence EdenAug 20, 2018
@eevb do you have a link to the article?
My (under informed) thought is that *generating* data is labour - but the end result is a good which may or may not be transferable or useful.
Show threadEdenAug 20, 2018
@Edent does this link work for you? https://medium.com/@the_economist/what-if-people-were-paid-for-their-data-8df63f021e38
What if People Were Paid for Their Data? – The Economist – Medium

Advocates of “data as labour” think users should be paid for using online services

Show threadTerence EdenAug 20, 2018
@eevb ah, cheers. I'll have to find my account details.
Show threadEdenAug 20, 2018
@Edent i'm just reading now, would be interested to hear your thoughts!
Show threadAral BalkanAug 20, 2018

@eevb The rhetoric of slavery, on the other hand, is spot on because what we are talking about is loss of personhood. We’re talking about the violation of the encapsulation of the self. So slavery not due to forced labour but due to ownership of the person and the person becoming property yet again.

In case you haven’t seen them, a few posts I wrote on the subject:

https://2018.ar.al/notes/the-nature-of-the-self-in-the-digital-age/

https://2018.ar.al/notes/encouraging-individual-sovereignty-and-a-healthy-commons/

https://2018.ar.al/notes/we-didnt-lose-control-it-was-stolen/

Aral Balkan — The nature of the self in the digital age

Show threadEdenAug 20, 2018
@aral right - so I felt that slavery made more sense, but felt unsure about how one could be anti the labour rhetoric but pro the slavery one? surely slavery is enforced and unpaid labour? but as i say in original thread - this is something i'm well aware i don't know lots about.
Show threadAral BalkanAug 20, 2018
@eevb It’s more about what’s at stake: if you own a person, everything else comes along for free. That’s what we must protect: personhood. If we can do that (via extending our understanding of the self to include the technologies by which we extend our selves, and thereby having our entire persons protected by human rights law in the digital/networked age) then we can start to build a sustainable society and a healthy commons made up of the interconnections between individually-sovereign people.
Show threadEdenAug 21, 2018
@aral That makes sense... only reservation about that vocab though is the history of the terminology, particularly in terms of race? Is it okay for us to refer to our data being owned and used without our consent for the profit of others (bad) using the same word that referred to mass physical (and sexual) violent abuse and exploitation of people?
Show threadEdenAug 21, 2018
@aral
We can, at the moment, get on with our lives relatively painfree whilst our data is being used... of course, things could massively change, and I am particularly concerned about eg incarceration and restriction of rights based on identity, views, etc which could be done through data access and ownership... but this is still different from the nature of the horrors of slavery eg in 19th C Americas
Show threadAral BalkanAug 20, 2018

@eevb You’re not wrong. Data about us, if you have enough of it (and the right algorithms) starts to approach us (to extrapolate: “data about people is people”). Those who harbour this “we should be paid for our data” trope don’t seem to understand (or maybe they do) that they’re saying “let’s sell ourselves”.

Welcome to Mastodon, by the way :)

Show threadEdenAug 20, 2018
@aral thank you! I was reading yours and Laura's work just yesterday :) were you at FutureFest?
Show threadAral BalkanAug 20, 2018
@eevb Yep, we were. (Although they put the football on at the same time as my talk so… let’s just say I’m not happy with them and leave it at that.) :)
Show threadEdenAug 20, 2018
@aral ah. yes. so um, can confirm i did not hear your talk... did not watch football either, but other talks that day which had been on similar areas (supposedly) were a bit weak and i needed to be somewhere else...
Show threadAral BalkanAug 20, 2018
@eevb They posted a video but didn’t edit in the slides (why am I not surprised?). I might edit a copy properly and release it. Will let you know if I do :)
Show threadEdenAug 21, 2018
@aral that would be cool to do! would hopefully end up reaching more people that way anyway.
Show threadAral BalkanAug 20, 2018
@eevb Just out of curiosity, what do you do? For someone professing ignorance on the subject, you seem anything but ignorant on it :)
Show threadEdenAug 21, 2018
@aral sorry, domestic labour and work called! will get back to you this evening :)
Show threadAral BalkanAug 21, 2018
@eevb Of course, no rush; this isn’t IM :)
Show threadEdenAug 20, 2018
@aral and yes - it seems to be quite literally buying into, or selling out to, surveillance capitalism - saying we can monetise this shit so let's do it!!
Show threadAral BalkanAug 20, 2018
@eevb Well, owning people was always a profitable business model. Today, we don’t need to own their bodies. Silicon Vallley is happy owning everything else about you that makes you who you are.