The Digital Erosion of Being You

As we enter the world of digital visibility we are opening ourselves up to always-on connectivity to those we love and care about by choice and free will. However, along the way, we give the same connectivity, information and privilege to a whole host of people we don’t know. Those that are the conduit to connectivity are pimping us to the highest bidders and not only do we get cheated of our cut in the deal; we even don’t know we’re being trafficked. Thus, we are up for sale to anyone who pays for access, we are simultaneously the ones being sold and sold to – we are the army of double-whammy “online losers” dressed up and encouraged to compete with each other to be the “latest, most popular, friend-rich, socially cool, connected” and stark-naked mini-emperors of “MyFace Youoogle” fiefdoms. We are so busily engaged in this futile competition that no one notices as we all turn into chumps, like the eBay bidders that pay extortionate prices because they are so fixated on being “winners”. Anyone and everyone can be crowned; any age, any gender, any and every preference and mishap is accommodated in this emperor club as long as you are proud of prostituting your digital identity.

In pursuit of their holy grail big business and the brand/advertising industry race to define and combine our “Digital Personalities” and “Digital Identities” into advertising (or “sucker”) profiles that are so accurate that advertising becomes an almost 100% indication and assurance of sales. Our seemingly fragmented engagement with various “services/utilities” is being sucked up and bought so that these service/utility “destinations” can be triangulated to “point to” and “define” our “digital personalities“ and “identities”. Unwittingly we are freely giving away our most valuable online asset, our digital “being”, for a bunch of frivolous widgets – the crown jewels in exchange for a few worthless trinkets… hardly a fair trade.

These activities illustrate an unfettered commercial drive to enforce the “transparent visibility” of our person to all and sundry; this is the surreptitious monetization of our identities. “Digital Personality” is the contextual advertising dream; precisely pin pointing and weaving our “interests” into an definitive profile indicating our strongest emotional drivers and attachments. Thus primed we are ready for surgical exploitation, targeting our emotional weaknesses to conquer our pockets; where and what we are most vulnerable and susceptible to wanting and buying, by-passing our rational decision-making. Our “Digital Identity” groups us for behavioural advertising based on data that indicates our social drivers, behaviours/habits and attachments to whatever is most demographically and socially important to us, again, by-passing rational choice and targeting us for bespoke exploitation driven by our own self-generated weakness to societal and social pressure.

If we encourage and support such an online world we are building a slaughterhouse of dreams. Everything of value has to be achieved in a vat of eternal youth and “Now” is the only currency in circulation. If we are not vigilant we will rapidly lose the ability to envisage anything of real worth, and if we lose that we cannot build anything that truly enriches our lives. The visionary big ideas will be lost in favour of the by-the-way fast-buck widget that sucks the life out of your digital mojo.

dmojo

© Dmojo, 2008-2009.

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Is Facebook Beacon a Privacy Nightmare?
http://gigaom.com/2007/11/29/to-save-its-bacon-facebooks-weakens-beacon/

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