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Observation by individuals going about their business is a vastly different thing than machine-generated, correlatable logs of your activities. The amount, gra
by _jal 7y ago
Observation by individuals going about their business is a vastly different thing than machine-generated, correlatable logs of your activities.
The amount, granularity and specificity of detailed information routinely gathered about people is in no way comparable to small town life. I grew up in a small town. The busy bodies knew gossip about me, but did not have timestamped lists of my reading materials to go with my purchase history.
Also, it is possible to opt-out of small towns.
- afthonos 7y agoI think the point is that it's possible to opt out now. It wasn't always so both due to the effort (moving to a large city was much harder when you had to walk with your stuff for several dozen or hundred miles) and to the laws (serfs didn't get to opt out of anything).
- jessaustin 7y agoSerfdom was also not the state of nature. Over the long millennia of human existence, it has usually been difficult to leave all the bullshit behind, but it has nearly always been possible. One problem that stone age humanity did not have was moving their "stuff", because that hadn't been invented yet.
- raxxorrax 7y agoI was born in a village of 2000 people. I didn't know anything about people on the next street. The village was right besides a large city and and since then be absorbed, but there is still a large difference to sharing some tents in the plains. And even then people probably had secrets.