"Wearables." Whether it is an Apple watch, fitbit or even a cellphone, we are generating data that we hand over to corporations every day and we do so willingly. Granted, our willingness to use a new app or device clouds our thinking in terms of all that we are giving away. Everytime we download a new app it asks for invasive permissions which usually include location, photos, contacts, searches among other sensitive bits of information. We can use our fingerprint or our face as a way to open our phones, both of which will be painful, difficult and costly to change. As Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451 intimates, the government will not demand people give away their information. People will happily give it away through their own choice.
Yuval Noah Hariri likens it to when the Europeans swindled Africans an Native Americans out of "entire countries...for colorful beads and cheap trinkets" (Harari 2018, 79). The problem is, now that we have started to do it, how do we stop? For me to have reduced costs for my health insurance, the insurance company requires biometric data exams once per year. They have an app that tracks my location which is used to tabulate "points" when I walk into a fitness center and stay for at least 30 minutes. Throughout the year I am required to earn a set number of points to keep my lower cost health insurance. Who does this information belong to? It seems like it should belong to the individual, but it is being given to a corporation who can store it and use it for a variety of purposes of their own choosing.
Harari, Yuval Noah. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. Spiegel & Grau, 2018.
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