Surveillance Capitalism.

Google, Facebook, Instagram, Email, Linkedin, mobile phone locator software, card transaction locators, search history.  The surveillance system knows who you meet when your phones are identified as being in the same place.   Phone microphones listen in to your private conversations.  Cars are being made into data pods that carry out surveillance.  The internet is becoming the web that reaches everywhere we go.

They watch us and work out how to make money from the information they collect.  They predict our behaviour.

People have lost the right to object.  The fine print contracts people sign when they register take away all their fundamental rights.  Courts have upheld these contracts as lawful even whey go well beyond what was lawful previously.  We are made to agree with something which we cannot understand.  We all click ‘I agree’ as we have no choice.  We cannot participate in society if we don’t sign.  There’s no way to talk back to these corporations.  There has been a universal seizure of rights without consent.  There has been no democratic process.  It is incarceration, not consent.

We’re all so busy and working, there’s no time to challenge it all, or imagine another world.  The internet was meant to be empowering.  It’s become a corporate-owned domain which is badly affecting our kids.  Kids are not developing their own identities, as they start to see themselves through the eyes of others, and live in their Smartphones.  Anyone who has nothing to hide is nothing.  We should not have to hide from the watchers.  People say,’I have nothing to hide.’  What about private information with doctors, things you have to say in private to your spouse, your relationship with your children?  Do you want that all over the internet.  Do you need all this watched and monitored?  ‘Why not just drop off the internet?’ says Ralph Nader.

The internet runs on coercion.  Corporations force people to use electronic means for everything they do.  The corporations want us to give up cheques and cash, and close the prison.   Can we recapture the narrative as we become aware of what is going on?  The forces that have hijacked the internet do not have our interests at heart.  We must change the narrative, form new vocabulary, and re-establish human autonomy – regain the right to object.

Less and less conversation.

Some parents ban cellphones from the kitchen.  That’s a start.  At our house, we ban gadgets from the upstairs and limit iPads to Friday evenings.  They are preying on children from a very young age.   You can’t get mass rallies any more – as opinion is fractured on the internet.   People’s trust and love for their phones and gadgets is misplaced.   Use the technology for your own purposes.  Don’t reveal so much.  Use other channels to learn from, and communicate.  Leave your cellphone behind.  Don’t lose your connection with nature, with your family, with your own mind.  They are automating us.

TAP – People are dropping newspapers and TV.  They are reading more books.  They are looking for alternatives to mainstream flow and capture.  It’s the start of a rebirth.  My recent book out on Amazon – Angels & Devils, My Extraordinary Life – is part of the fightback.