‘The Subversion of Paradoxes’ — A 2018 Retrospective: Part I (Ch. 4/10)
Chapter 4— Beyond Clicks: The Futures of Commerce, Advertising & Privacy
Ahead of the upcoming 5th anniversary edition of IAM Weekend (March 21–23, 2019 in Barcelona), in this 10-chapter retrospective we recap the key learnings, activities and next steps that emerged from our 2018 research theme: The Subversion of Paradoxes. In this chapter we present the key learnings from the ‘Beyond Clicks’ session of our annual event.
The great hope for decentralised power — the internet — has become centralised through the influence of large corporations, particularly in the realm of commercialising clicks through advertising. And unpacking this paradox reveals further contradictions: the more they know about us, the less we know about them, and the more we seem to buy.
At IAM Weekend 18, we set about trying to build a collective, digital consciousness of our data and metadata footprint. We’re grateful to technologist Ian Ardouin-Fumat, Panoptykon Foundation President Katarzyna Szymielewicz, who also is one of the lawyers who helped shaped GDPR and artist and researcher Joana Moll for sharing their insights on digital literacy, Internet materiality, surveillance, social profiling and the politics of interfaces.
Here the three key learnings from this session:
1. We need open tools that not only improve digital literacy but also empower people to fight back against microtargeting and power imbalances
2. We need to be more aware of the metadata being collected by corporations, as there is now a small window of opportunity to challenge how the internet is being used against us. It is “time to disagree”
3. It is urgent to discuss the Internet’s materiality — its (geo)political, environmental and social implications — and challenge the metaphors that make its infrastructure invisible or unreal
The 3 quotes from where these key learnings come from:
“I was wondering in which ways I could create a tool that would not just inform the public about the ways they are targeted online but also in which ways they could fight back … It is called Deface. It really came about … with the realisation that the Cambridge Analytica scandal is not a data breach, is not a leak, it is not a bug. It is a feature. It is the way the platform is meant to be used.”
– Ian Ardouin-Fumat, technologist
Watch the full talk | Share quote on Twitter | Learn more about Deface
“What is really interesting is the moment when we get to patterns. To understand the patterns of our behavior and the deeper picture of our live that is revealed by metadata, by the way we use our devices, by revealing all those little pieces of data that most users don’t even realise that they generate.”
Katarzyna Szymielewicz, co-founder and President, Panoptykon Foundation
“There is this general un-acknowledgment of how much agency code has, and algorithms as well … this is something that needs to be much more visible … I think that it has to be highly embedded in the social imagination because it is not. Because as I say, the Internet is highly invisible. It is the biggest infrastructure that humanity has ever built but it is really not visible. It is not. And it is super physical.”
Joana Moll, artist & researcher
‘The Subversion of Paradoxes’ — A 2018 Retrospective is a 10-chapter retrospective where we recap the key learnings, activities and next steps that emerged from IAM’s 2018 research theme.
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👉 Join us for IAM Weekend 19, our annual meeting for creative agents of change who care about the futures of the internet(s) where you can discover, be inspired and interconnect with diverse perspectives around our research theme for 2019: ‘The Quantumness of Archipelagos’.
