Week 1: ‘You are the Product’ – Jon Lanchester.
I like Facebook. I shouldn’t like Facebook. As Lanchester explains, it uses my interests, my conversations and it can even see the small inquisitions made throughout my adolescence to adulthood (including all the questions that would naturally occur to any teenage boy). Ah. However, as some may say, ‘so what?’ all the piles of information and stacks of data could be described as nothing more than a slightly embarrassing looking glass into a marginally repressed but privileged formative years. Some one knows; no different to, in a more god fearing age, the belief that the Almighty can hear your darkest thoughts. It becomes more visibly uncomfortable as you scroll through Facebook, trying to receive the emotional reassurance that your life is going ‘forward’ faster than an old school nemesis, and an advert appears in the familiar right hand frame for a product you ordered at lunch from your work computer. A little odd. ‘It’ knows. But it easy to suppress the immediate panic as you...