For those unfamiliar with the term ‘Canary in the Coal Mine’, the legend goes like this: In the early days of mining, when it was a really dangerous job, miners would bring a caged Canary into the shaft with them. Being that Canaries are especially sensitive to deadly methane and carbon monoxide gases, the miners would know to bust a move should the Canary keel over.
Today we are surrounded by a swirling storm of 1’s and 0’s; a digital cocoon for every Tom, Dick and Harry. We are awash in the content, connections and information made possible by the internet. Perhaps in the future the internet will be something that empowers and enhances humanity. But for now, we’re all just going to have to take one for the team and suffer through it’s toxicity. …. we, the Canaries in the Data Mine.
In “The Mobile Wave” author Michael Saylor argues that the changes brought by mobile computing are so big and widespread that it’s impossible for us to see it all, mainly because we are so immersed in it. Here is what we can see:
-Consumer fraud. The NY State Attorney General Fraud Report says that 2016 marks the 11th year in a row, that the most complaints received to its hotline were regarding internet related hucksters, scammers and providers.
-Advertiser fraud.
-Journalism has been more or less decimated, leaving most people naive to reality. In an effort to attract Adtech placements, journalists are compensated more and more by meeting page view quotas. This in turn funds an avalanche of click-bait crap, relentlessly drives a wedge between an already politically divided populous and spawns legions of fake news publishers.
-Social media has hypercognized vanity to an insane level while simultaneously acting as a particle accelerator for the already potent amount of insecurity in the world.
-Spyware, ransomware, and malware are all designed to screw up your entire digital life to the point where you would have been better off without one.
-Identity Theft hit an all-time high in 2016, soaring to an estimated 15.4 million consumers.
-Agonizingly gummed up and patchy connections to the internet (thanks again, in no small part to adtech) make even the most innocent and mundane online interaction more painful and horrifying than being locked in the trunk of a VW Beetle in a car crusher.
-The Net is a net-net jobs destroyer.
-Centralized powers that are not in line with personal or social powers are empowered by the internet.
-Bad things are funded by advertisers online.
