CHUD.com Community › Forums › DVD, HOME THEATER, & GADGETS › Chewer Tech › The Cost Of Free
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

The Cost Of Free

post #1 of 11
11/2/10 at 7:41am
Thread Starter 
Fascinating, illuminating, worrisome - I think a must watch. A look at the deal we all enter into when we log onto the 'free' world of the internet. Seriously my fellow chewers, watch this if you haven't already, it's great...

Quote:
Every day in Britain millions of searches are carried out on Google for free. Every month we spend millions of hours on Facebook for free and read millions of articles from free newspapers. But now look at it the other way round.

Every day Google gathers millions of search terms that help them refine their search system and give them a direct marketing bonanza that they keep for months.

Every week Facebook receives millions of highly personal status updates that are kept forever and are forming the basis of direct advertising revenue.

Every month free newspapers plant and track a cookie tracking device on your computer that tells them what your range of interests are and allows them to shape their adverts and in the future, even content around you. So you're not just being watched, you're being traded. The currency has changed.
The look at just how much information we give to the net each day and the possible implications of it are portentous enough, but its things like the history of Google within the wider context of the growing of the net I found particularly fascinating - especially within the context of having just seen The Social Network.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNAfnfcergc

I'll be very very interested in chewers views of this documentary.
Reply
post #2 of 11
11/2/10 at 8:10am
Gonna look into this. Thanks for the heads-up, RD.

(Love that Ebert quote in your sig, man.)
Reply
post #3 of 11
11/2/10 at 8:29am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by tommy five-tone View Post
Gonna look into this. Thanks for the heads-up, RD.
It was on SBS tonight and I found it utterly engrossing. Really worth watching.

Quote:
(Love that Ebert quote in your sig, man.)
Isn't it fantastic???
Reply
post #4 of 11
11/2/10 at 9:13am
Rain Dog, perhaps you will find this Chris Anderson's article as fascinating as I did.
Reply
post #5 of 11
11/2/10 at 10:35pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks Andres, that is fascinating. It's kind of amazing watching not just how we're changing the net so quickly, but how it's changing us as well. I mean this tech is really only just over a decade old as a mainstream used technology - where the hell will it (and us) be in another ten or twenty?
Reply
post #6 of 11
11/3/10 at 12:05am
Interesting article (The Wired article I mean) but not completely convincing. I just heard (on NPR) a statistic that in 2010 80% of all Web traffic is Netflix streaming content. Yes that is a paid service, but it delivers content via a Website, and that content would otherwise not be legally available.

Most consumers have made it clear they don't mind giving up their privacy. It is a very high cost that they don't perceive...and may never perceive or "pay".

To me what's much more worrying is how the proliferation of Social Networks seem to be driving a new era of Groupthink. I can see where 10 or 15 years from now, you will be hired or not hired for a job based on your interests, "personality" (as presented on FaceBook and LinkedIn etc), even politics.

Also with Auto makers bragging that the new car models include means to update your FaceBook page on the road, GPS in Smartphones etc means that you can Cyber Stalk many people very easily. This is not a good thing IMO. Privacy has a value.
Reply
post #7 of 11
11/3/10 at 1:15am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cylon Baby View Post
To me what's much more worrying is how the proliferation of Social Networks seem to be driving a new era of Groupthink. I can see where 10 or 15 years from now, you will be hired or not hired for a job based on your interests, "personality" (as presented on FaceBook and LinkedIn etc), even politics.
The doco I linked to goes into this as well, how things like the rigid profiling of social networks and the encouragement of recommendation engines are homogenising identities so that we start to become less like individuals and instead are evolving into a personality fit for bland pre-conceived demographics.
Reply
post #8 of 11
11/3/10 at 1:29am
Do any of those things actually cite scientific research that support their hypotheses? I know that when I use free sites that the currency I'm paying with is information. Of course I'm a software developer and imagine myself to be familiar with the things they're doing with my information.

In the end, would I rather pay for another subscription or get something for free by giving up some non-intrusive personal info so that someone can actually try to sell me products that are relevant to how I live my life? Well, the latter doesn't sound too bad.
Reply
post #9 of 11
11/3/10 at 2:31am
Thread Starter 
One of the points that scared me tho was that it isn't necessarily the fact that these retailers and other companies have your information now as much as it's what someone or something could do with that information in the future that's the worrying part.

A pretty scary example was used of the government of the Netherlands doing extensive profiling and surveying of their citizenry in the 1920's with the best of intentions and one of the questions was 'what religion are you?' so that they could give people appropriate funerals upon their deaths. Obviously tho when the Nazis took over, they used that wealth of information for a very different use.
Reply
post #10 of 11
11/7/10 at 1:21am
Credit card companies probably know more about us than Google (for the time being, anyway).
Reply
post #11 of 11
11/9/10 at 7:16am
Thread Starter 
The next (and last) episode in the series, Homo Interneticus? where the series looks at the way the net - and social networking in particular - has changed the way our minds think and the way we relate to each other.

Particularly fascinating in the light of The Social Networks recent release.
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Chewer Tech
CHUD.com Community › Forums › DVD, HOME THEATER, & GADGETS › Chewer Tech › The Cost Of Free