My attempt to turn it into something short enough for my brain would be:
Secrecy is where they don't know anything about you. (And that is long gone)
Privacy is where they know everything about you, but are not allowed to exploit you. (And that is the fight for the next decade)
Progess is where they know everything about you, and can assist you in your best interests. (that's my conjecture)
The individual is not necessarily the limit of happiness. IMO it's a very limited view on things, to consider individual as the epitome of affect.
But I dont believe the good of society outweighs the good of the individual - simply because society is made up of individuals- so we do need to keep individual rights and protections at the top.
I am terrified of the future if this is the normal opinion and considered 'Progress'.
The problem is indeed consequences, most privacy warriors assume mishandling of data, i.e. bad consequences.
In a world with more data we wouldn't have any preventable disease. Like at all.
In a perfect world this wouldn't be necessary. In the real world we have Cambridge Analytica manipulating elections. Volkswagen cheating regulators. Boeing deciding their bottom line is more important than lives.
And you can't prevent all disease with data alone. Most of us have some vices that we know are bad for our health but we do them anyway. And sometimes rightly so. Physical health isn't the only thing that matters in life. We make trade-offs and there's more than just data driving them. We're creatures of emotion :)
I definitely wouldn't trade off perfect health for having no privacy.
I suspect that makes you a tiny tiny majority.
>>> I just don't want companies I don't trust to own my data.
Neither do I. So i can have a world where my data is secret so companies do not have your data (not sure this is possible)
or we force the companies to be trustworthy (perhaps almost as hard but we do have many examples of doing this.)
Imagine a world where handling private data requires a professional qualification and membership, like say a banking license.
Regulations require that the location data tracking you and your family (ie Life360) is provided to the NHS researchers via encrypted file transfer, you cannot support your business with targeted advertising.
Imagine I can have my family's screentime data sent for analysis and a weekly review video is sent back to me suggesting my recent videos have been veering towards the usual QAnon gateway path and perhaps I should be careful.
My super market purchase history and credit card use at the takeaway suggests I am eating less healthily than my previously agreed limits - would Inlike to start the middle aged man Supermarket order list which gets me ingredients and recipies that might achieve my goals
I know this sounds dystopian- and I need to spend some time writing it up - but frankly I need help with life, and I think most people who evolved for chasing antelope and intellectually wrestling with a tribe / family no bigger than a wedding guest list need help handling the modern world.
We should have the modern world set to good defaults (why not have every salary drop 5% into a index fund from age 18) - and this sort of "intrusive" data management is one way to scale that
How many people go to McDonalds despite knowing it's basically poison?
How many people do drugs or cigarettes or even alcohol knowing it's bad?
I don't think this is a minority at all. A lot of people just don't care enough.
> Imagine I can have my family's screentime data sent for analysis and a weekly review video is sent back to me suggesting my recent videos have been veering towards the usual QAnon gateway path and perhaps I should be careful.
Lol I always disable screentime as I view it as solving a non-isue. But what will you do if the user ignores the "perhaps you should be careful". The news already advises us that QAnon ideas are factually incorrect. This doesn't stop people, it almost feels like it does the opposite (QAnon supporters will view this as confirmation that the state is against them).
So this is not very effective. It won't actually work without mandating it. Meaning complete state control and censorships. Which means no freedom anymore. Also, it will even reinforce the QAnon narrative of "big state forcing ideas into our heads". Because, really, that is exactly what you will be doing. You will basically be fighting them by making them right. Does that really make sense?
> My super market purchase history and credit card use at the takeaway suggests I am eating less healthily than my previously agreed limits - would Inlike to start the middle aged man Supermarket order list which gets me ingredients and recipies that might achieve my goals
Again, most people that are overweight know they're eating wrong. Including myself. It does not stop them.
What I do wish is more availability of good food for takeaway. Living alone it's a major bore having to cook and all the takeaway choices are bad. But that's beside the point. Informing people does not help and we're doing this already. Forcing them takes away all their freedoms. They will rally against it. Would you like to live in a prison where someone else decides what you're going to eat?
> We should have the modern world set to good defaults (why not have every salary drop 5% into a index fund from age 18) - and this sort of "intrusive" data management is one way to scale that
We're already doing that. It's called "taxes". The government doesn't "index fund" it but funds are a speculative thing. They have no return if they are ubiquitous. Besides, our governments prefer borrowing instead. Good or bad, they're so far into that rabbit hole they're never going to get out.
> I know this sounds dystopian- and I need to spend some time writing it up - but frankly I need help with life, and I think most people who evolved for chasing antelope and intellectually wrestling with a tribe / family no bigger than a wedding guest list need help handling the modern world.
Yes it sounds very dystopian. And don't take the "Chinese model" for something that has come as a response to modern society. On the contrary, it's based on Confucianism which predates our western society and religions (he died about 500 years BCE). Personally I think his ideas about servitude to the state might have worked back then but they are not working today. It's something that was useful when life was hanging by a thread. It's not for solving first world problems :)
Do many people need help? Sure. But I'm sure many people needed help too during the industrial revolution or middle ages. In fact they needed a lot more help. They were dropping like flies back then. I agree our minds are not made for connecting the world on a global scale. But we deal with that already. Think about your Whatsapp list (or whatever IM you use). You don't have everyone in the world in that. Just your buddies. You find circles on the web with people with common interests. Such as here. We're recreating our own comfortable little villages. We already make a huge difference in people "we know" and that we don't. Again this predates the internet and started being a thing from the time we started living in cities.
I'm sorry you need help. Go look for it, you will find it! But I don't think building the society you intend will really solve any issues. It will just brush them under the carpet, just like it does in China.
Also, if you really want this... I'm sure the Chinese government will let you move there :)
The problem with mass surveillance isn't only what is done with the data. It's that it's being done in the first place. I personally hate the feeling of governments and corporations spying on me every hour of every day 1) . Whether it affects me or not. I don't want my own phone to look over my shoulder. I don't want to watch what I say online. I just want to be myself. I feel this surveillance as a constant pressure on me in life these days.
1) Person of Interest quote intended :)
Look, I'm pretty sure I'm well known to a whole bunch of security services (hi y'all!) just by virtue of my daily commute. But here's the deal - what matters is how this can be used against me, or not. There's no realistic scenario in which I'm going to come to grief from the various security apparatus I happen to pass each day.
No, what matters much, much more than whether my face and habits of movement are known to various state organs (admittedly: given that I live in the Netherlands where the rule of law is still a thing) is the degree to which I can come to grief in my personal life from shitty, sloppy private mass surveillance.
Which, fortunately, is relatively constrained here. My health insurance premium isn't going to inexplicably go up (or, for that matter, my coverage denied) because someone who looks like me (who may not be me, but I have no access to the data or ability to appeal) is living an unhealthy life in public. No, the rates are fixed for everyone, and insurers don't get to cherry-pick. While I wouldn't mind an health insurance discount for cycling instead of driving a car those 10km/day, in general I'm satisfied with the regulatory regime here in a way that I very very much wasn't when I lived in the US. Nor would I be denied a mortgage here (or charged a higher rate) based on my alleged movements in meatspace or cyberspace. Insurers and banks just aren't allowed - with meaningful regulatory oversight - to incorporate these factors into underwriting products that most people consume. (Life insurance is a different story, but also not something most people in NL purchase.)
tl;dr: it's not surveillance per se that matters, it's the consequences attached. Even if you have the right to know how surveillance data affect your ability to live your life (and to appeal), those rights are useless to anyone who lacks the time and knowledge to go chasing them. Far better as a society to, up front, say "nope, sorry, everyone needs health insurance/access to basic financial products like mortgages on primary residences/etc" and limit the scope of discrimination. Because tech gonna tech, and that's impossible to stop over the long term.