The Human in the Machine

A “fictionalized” adaptation of an inquiry from an anonymous reader.

There are no visuals or audio associated with raw “data.” Any visuals or audio associated with data are the result of the data “running through” a vendor’s software.

A simple explanation of “software” is that it is a package of rules that have been designed to render specific results. Accordingly, “software” can be thought of as a physical or virtual structure that allows data to be displayed in the manner intended by the software inventor or creator.

Vendors that create “software” like to use this term like a sword. In the context of contract negotiations, for example, software vendors take a very dominant position. Their position is that, if you use their software, they own: (1) any data you send or supply to them during the course of using their software; and (2) any data they subsequently obtain about you from any other data sources.

Side bar: Here is what I have learned from my several years of experience in the software industry. There is nothing special about a software development company — other than the fact that they were able to obtain the requisite level of financing for their ideas. There are, in fact, plenty of independent inventors and creators that are far more knowledgeable and skilled than the people in decision-making roles at software companies. For me, software companies are like that scene from the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy peeks behind the curtain and sees that there is nothing “magical” there. Don’t be afraid of larger, more dominant software developers. Most of them got to where they are by copying, stealing, or “extracting” ideas from far more gifted and creative independent inventors and creators. Like the Wizard, their “bigness” is a well-crafted illusion.

In general, software companies regard everything as “their data.” According to their logic, this includes so-called “human data.”

According to them, if I merely provided my name and email address in response to a form or survey, their position is that they also “own” any other data they can find on the Internet using my name or email address.

Most people are aware that their responses to a form or survey are used for other purposes, such as marketing. For this reason, it’s no surprise that a vendor may claim ownership of a dataset containing my name or email address.

But what most people do not know is that, under software developer logic, they own not just my name and email address but also any data they can obtain about me from anywhere on the Internet. Thus, according to them, the mere act of providing my name and email in response to a survey, gives them a right to thereafter collect any other information they can find about me “on the Internet” — including my my reactions, feedback, financial records, purchase history, Internet activity, psychological state of mind, mental health, biological information, even my health records.

After they combine all that “data,” they then license, sell, or share it with other businesses and vendors (usually other software developers), who then add additional information sourced from yet other data sources. In this manner, each vendor is essentially creating its own version of “me” using my “data” which they claim they “own.” (For obvious reasons, any conscious being would take issue with that interpretation of “data ownership”.)

As illogical as their overly broad claim of ownership may seem, that is exactly how most software vendor contracts are currently written. In fact, from the software vendor’s perspective, because they own all data “running through their software,” they are entitled to use that data in any manner they choose.

In this context, the term their software should be regarded as the entirety of the Internet. The reason is because what most people broadly refer to as “the Internet” is, in fact, a system of connected systems. According to them, because they own the infrastructure and rules underlying that “system of connected systems,” the Internet is “their software.”

Under this logic, if you use their software, which in this case refers to “the Internet,” they have a right to “tag” you and to thereafter track and follow you throughout your entire Internet journey. Remarkably, most of these contracts include language giving them a right to track you — “in perpetuity” — “throughout the Universe.”

Incoming Inquiry: “What happens when each software company claims that it is their right to create “digital twins” of the human data they claim to “own” within each Metaverse they also own?

Outgoing Answer: “The occurrence of so-called “Doppelganger’s will increase. And, under their logic, they will own a person’s Doppelganger.”

As strange as this may all seem, it is true.

And to me, that is just wrong.