Written with compassion while also talking without cheap rage.

I am still convinced that the ongoing push of ’smart’ things into our networks being ad driven is a comfortable lie we tell ourselves, especially in the broader community of techies. Confronting the fact that gathering ‘data’ in this depth and broadness without an immediately observable use is much more nefarious looking in all its Damocles’ish vagueness than just doing the hand waving about ‘the ad industry’. This very industry is applying and developing ever new methods of capturing attention and manipulating our decision making processes. If you repeat that without the prefix ‘ad’, this sounds exactly as dangerous as it is.

But laws will not save us. The principal ideas of data sovereignty that the European Union tried to implement were spot on, but without real and pragmatic enforcement, they are essentially moot.

I don’t have even a single original thought about all of this. But being at my wits end makes me interested in other people’s thoughts about this complex.