We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Online Privacy: The Relentless Pursuit For Your Personal Data

Click here to access article by David Smith from Economy Watch. 
Despite growing public concern, companies such as Google and Facebook continue to demonstrate an insatiable desire to gather and market our personal information to advertisers. Today, these companies are even able to manage our online identities by creating the equivalent of an ID card for the Internet.
This is one of the best articles I've seen on the subject of social media and search engine technology used as data pumps for corporations that want to sell you stuff. (Not mentioned in the article is the access of this information by government authorities.) Like all corporations, internet companies are occasionally caught harming people, but their fines are only a minor cost of doing business and thus do not act as a deterrent. Clearly, this corporate use of our personal information offsets to an unknown extent the advantages of connectivity to promote activist programs.
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