Last night I watched an episode of The Secrets of SIlicon Valley on the BBC and found the subject interesting. For those not having seen it, and I would recommend you do if it is available in your jurisdiction, it was effectively suggesting that recent political phenomena like the election of Donald Trump, were heavily influenced by Social Media platforms.
Now that's not necessarily 'news' to IT people, but what was particularly interesting was how the programme makers took a gently critical, almost mocking, view of the altruistic, slightly hippy style world view of the people behind the technologies in Silicon Valley.
Taking my own opinions on global connectivity into focus, where I used to believe that global connectivity would lift millions out of overarching state control and into the fold of being free to make your own choices, I'm now not so sure.
Giving unaccountable corporations massive amounts of data that they are allowed to use to profile us to an ever improving degree, doesn't just show us more highly targeted adverts it can be used to influence us in ways that perhaps we are no longer conscious of or actually are concerned about.
Sometimes, tools can be used in more than one way. This is a case where the outcome is not as the designers expected. Is it a case now that the genie is out of the bottle and we have to live with the consequences or is there anything that can be done about it.
I'll let you make your own decision about that!
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