Digital economy: You click, they know

The Digital Alarmist

Have you ever wondered why you are ever so inclined to click on some eye-catching advertisement on the web offering special deals such as ‘bogo’ (buy one, get one) or a free gift card, good at certain stores only, for consenting to participate in a survey? If you would like to know the answer, and the answer is indeed quite involved, perhaps you should read the rest of this article.

Let me first introduce you to one remarkably prescient author, Vance Packard, now largely faded from memory. In a series of writings in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Packard foresaw all of what is currently taking place in the social media-intoxicated internet world. Back then, there was no internet and the relatively few computers in existence were exclusively in the hands of government agencies and certain large corporations. Among the many seminal works of Packard, three are of special import -- The Hidden Persuaders (1957), The Waste Makers (1960) and The Naked Society (1964).

The Hidden Persuaders details how American society had become addicted to consumerism, mostly attributable to mass merchandising campaigns conducted by advertising companies through broadcast media and the film industry. Consumerism, a viral disease that has now been successfully exported to the rest of the world through smartphones and social media, a disease for which a successful vaccine, I am quite convinced, can never be found.

The Waste Makers is an exposition of the role played by planned obsolescence in driving economic growth – the principal reason behind why companies are always coming up with ‘new and improved’ versions of whatever products they have to offer in the marketplace in order to stay profitable and stay relevant. Why settle for the iPhone 10 which you currently own when your friends have moved on to the 13th generation iPhone SE 2020? Even version 15, which may be just a few weeks away, to upstage your pals and stay relevant. Isn’t the software on your digital devices constantly being updated, whether you like it or not? Not to mention the dire warnings that pop up when the update notices are displayed, if only to force you to act.

The essay The Naked Society explores the drastic alteration of American character and culture from one that prized self-restraint and loyalty to high standards and presented heroes for emulation to one that has been replaced by a commercially fabricated ‘culture’ of infotainment in which nothing seems to matter but the economy.

According to Packard, people buy products to satisfy eight compelling needs, most of which have to do with a sense of self-worth, ego gratification, a desire to be ‘in control’ and be heard, a love of objects and a sense of community.

Since each of us is unique, our social media postings and web browsing activities provide extensive clues on who we are. Which is where the business models of Google, Facebook and other social media platforms come into the picture since they are the ones monitoring their users. In the words of one social media executive, “We look to understand who a person is, based on where they’ve been and where they’re going, in order to influence what they’re going to do next.” Advertisers are willing to pay millions of dollars to Google, Facebook and other data brokers for precisely this type of information.

Since there is no basic consumer privacy law in most countries (The European Union is an exception), every individual is responsible for navigating the entire surveillance-economy complex on their own.

Legislation such as the explicit Right to Information (RTI) Act ensures a certain measure of transparency in government operations; this stands in sharp contrast to the implicit RTI that the IT behemoths currently enjoy because their services are ‘free’. Huge amounts of money can be made consolidating everything that is known about an individual.

While our private persona is very different from our ‘always watched’ public persona, over passage of time, our private and public persona merge, just in time to join the millions who have already made the transition.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, is there?