"…the Internet is basically the equivalent of electronic telepathy. We can now communicate all the time through our little magic smartphones with people who are anywhere, all the time, constantly learning what they're thinking, talking about, exchanging messages. Of course, this magic works both ways." — Edward Snowden
Data has become the defining economic and social heuristic in our brave new world.
"Data is the ultimate commodity because it capitalizes the market's most valuable resource. That's why it's called data mining. We are, quite literally, mining you and forging your data into unimaginable profit and power." — Steve Bannon
“With advertising, the free market does not yield a neutral system in which final buyer choice decides. The advertisers’ choices influence media prosperity and survival.” – Milton Friedland
But here's the bigger problem…
Addiction by algorithm is as effective at selling ideology as it is selling consumer advertising.
"Corporations are, theologically speaking, institutions of death. They commodify everything - the natural world, human beings - that they exploit until exhaustion or collapse. And what they want is for us to give up. They want us to become passive. They want us to become tacitly complicit in our own destruction." — Chris Hedges
