Digital Age 3-Pack

Includes:

Commercial Surveillance Culture

Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web, once described the internet as a "permissionless space for creativity, innovation and free expression." In the early days, you may recall, the internet was also called the “information superhighway.” It would be open, free and with no advertising. It hasn’t quite worked out that way. Tech giants like Facebook and Google control a huge percentage of traffic on the internet with algorithms designed with just one priority in mind: make that cash register ring. In turning the internet into an ATM machine the tech giants have amassed huge amounts of personal information about you. They know your likes and dislikes. Right now, Facebook, with billions of users, is mired in controversy. Its platform has been a forum for polarizing content ranging from hate and bigotry to misinformation and human trafficking. Calls are getting louder and louder for meaningful regulation.

Hackers and Democracy

The digital age has given birth to hackers who carry out cyberattacks on our personal data, on pipelines, energy grids and meat processing plants. There are also hackers who practice the sharing of software, open sourcing and the secure free flow of information. Maureen Webb says those hackers “are making some of the most important contributions to preserving our liberal democratic tradition in the 21^st century."

Surveillance Capitalism

Surveillance Capitalism is a global architecture of behavior modification which poses profound threats to society. It was invented at Google, duplicated at Facebook, and has moved almost seamlessly into virtually every economic sector. Vast wealth is accumulated in an ominous new economic order where predictions of our behavior are bought and sold. Surveillance Capitalism has ominous consequences for democracy and humanity in the 21^st century. It is based on extreme inequalities of knowledge and power. It claims human experience as a free source of raw material and challenges our autonomy and social solidarity. Our minds are being mined and harvested for data and are being fundamentally changed in the process. Surveillance Capitalism is a business model that Shoshana Zuboff says seeks growth by cataloguing our “every move, emotion, utterance and desire.”

Speakers

Jeff Chester

Jeff Chester is Executive Director of the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), a Washington, DC non-profit organization, advocating for citizens, consumers, and other stakeholders on digital privacy and consumer protection online. CDD led the campaign for the enactment of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, COPPA.

Kathryn Montgomery

Kathryn Montgomery is Professor Emerita at the School of Communication at American University and Research Director with the Center for Digital Democracy. She is the author of Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet.

Maureen Webb

Maureen Webb is a labor lawyer and human rights activist. She has taught national security law as an Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post-9/11 World and Coding Democracy: How Hackers Are Disrupting Power, Surveillance, and Authoritarianism.

Shoshana Zuboff

Shoshana Zuboff is professor emerita at the Harvard Business School. She is the author of In the Age of the Smart Machine and The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.