Whispering In Your Ear … Vote for Eve!

I sat on the 45 bus today on my way to work, and I noticed that the person in the seat in front of me was reading “1984”, by George Orwell. As one of my favouriate authors, I am continually brought back to his thinking around governments observing their citizens. But, in this information age, though, it is often Google, Facebook, and all the other companies who profit from our activities, who are possibly spying on citizens than it is by our governments.

Let’s think of a future “Big Brother” world, and where politicians speak over the broadcast media. Our leader is Eve, and she runs the EveParty. she wants to talk to everyone with a personalised message, and so she records a message with gaps in it …

“The main issue I will address is [pause]”.

When the message is broadcast, it is then customized for every citizen, so that they hear a message that matters to them.

This system would be the dream of any politician, and where they could whisper your ear (and say whatever they wanted, so that they could influence you). But this type of political manipulation has happened, and it has social media as its core harvesting method, and also its delivery vehicle. And so the massive social media engine which mines data on us, and tries to profile us, and then targeted advertisements, has now been used for…