Defying the Data Priests

The business rationale for the smart home is to bring the intimate patterns of life into the fold of the surveillance economy, which has a one-way mirror quality. Increasingly, every aspect of our lives — our voices, our facial expressions, our political affiliations and intellectual predilections —...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inNew Atlantis (Washington, D.C.) no. 66; pp. 111 - 113
Main Author Crawford, Matthew B.
Format Journal Article Magazine Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Washington Center for the Study of Technology and Society 01.10.2021
Ethics And Public Policy Center
Subjects
Antitrust laws
Insurance
Privacy
Rating services
Ratings & rankings
Secrecy
Surveillance
Technological change
Testimony
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Summary:The business rationale for the smart home is to bring the intimate patterns of life into the fold of the surveillance economy, which has a one-way mirror quality. Increasingly, every aspect of our lives — our voices, our facial expressions, our political affiliations and intellectual predilections — are laid bare as data to be collected by companies who, for their own part, guard with military-grade secrecy the algorithms by which they use this information to determine the world that is presented to us, for example when we enter a search term, or in our news feeds. They are also in a position to determine our standing in the reputational economy. The credit rating agencies and insurance companies would like to know us more intimately; I suppose Alexa can help with that.
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ISSN:1543-1215
1555-5569