Data Love The Seduction and Betrayel of Digital Technologies by Roberto Simanonsky

Data Love The Seduction and Betrayel of Digital Technologies by Roberto Simanonsky  is a splendid and beautiful book about our society, our relationship with technologies, but most important, governments's relationship with them (including other important societies); all of it because of data.

In the past there was normality and privacy. Discretion: when the net opened its magical doors it was as if people, frustrated of their common life or just excited because of this new dimension found an universe in grade of appreciate them; I compare the net to the magical land where Lucignolo and Pinocchio fell in; the net introduced people in an endless land of freedom where they could meet wonderful people, chatting of everything, believe in everything.

This endless land of freedom of speech, freedom of searching, freedom of posting thanks also to social medias like Facebook, WhatsUp, Instagram, Snapchat, means also for societies, profiles and profits, thanks to accumulation of data. Our tastes, what we are interested in, our video conversations are crucially important to a lot of societies and governments, and all these informations later create algorithms and perfect, imperfect profiles of ingenuous web...navigators.

It's a big problem this one although I am more than sure that if I would ask to someone if worried for it, no one would live at all this story in an alarmist way. Why? Because it is a virtual problem. And being virtual there is still a difference of perception. It's distant from the reality.

But...Is it realistically distant?

What kind of directions will take the net asks the author?

It's important to keep the platform free or we will assist at an internet of series A for some elects, and another one, for the majority of people of series B. The first group of people will access the best of the net, the second one just limited resources. More or less the same process experienced by the TV, in the past completely free.

Was it better so the net of the first hours, completely free? A question without a proper answer to me, considering also the massive changes created by this hurricane. The net destroyed everything, from letters to postcards, but something else resisted at this tornado. Books. They didn't die. All the rest is in great confusion media including; and so in most cases good information is not anymore free.

But...When data became a problem?
Everything started with Edward Snowden and what happened in 2013, when the NSA's agent met reporters of the Washington Post and the Guardian, revealing that the American citizens were spied; adding that they were in good company.

Americans tried their best for capturing after these declarations Snowden: the Embassy of Ecuador in London where Snowden is still living in, saved his life.

But... What wanted to communicate Snowden at the world?

Apart having sacrificed his entire life for this purpose, it meant for the public opinion a new debate regarding the use and abuse of a society always more controlled from powers that we don't see; we are all children of a Big Brother; of a Truman Show.

We are controlled everywhere. GPS if installed in the car tell where we go; smart phones became clever; if you disactivate this function in case you lose your smart phone you can't find it anymore, they tell you; and you say, OK, let's activate my position; losing any sort of privacy;  google maps but also that innocuous cards we ingenuously use at the supermarket for buying food and other items, that sometimes gratify us with some expensive gifts; our preferences, our tastes, what we eat, what we consume is spied all the time People with the time became consumers and consumers don't have secrets anymore for societies in the world, thanks to the net.

Our posts, pictures, comments, likes are controlled. Our life becomes a silent and sometimes unwanted and unconscious auto-biography. 

Where end the privacy of a person?

How can we fight against this invisible prison where there is no freedom although we apparently feel that there is not any prison and we are all free like birds?

It's difficult but the author suggests of using the common sense. Better an e-mail than the use and abuse of Facebook and Messenger so loved by everyone.

Data scientists are in grade to understand people's problems, abuse of drugs, just observing or reading their likes or comments.

Snapchat works differently under many ways because permits to people the visualization of a picture that will be deleted in a few seconds after its visualization. Snapchat is the "internet forgetting," although some risks of the use and abuse of the internet are profound: deep reading is diminishing like also deep thinking and the internet reduces socialization; although in certain situation is helpful.

Will people return to the dear old letters for communicate? Postcards? Oh, if stamps wouldn't cost a fortune!

The author proposes, in a society where forgetting is no secured, forgiving as the most powerful word so that people can anyway work also if they posted on Facebook and other social media deficient things in the remote past; deficiency exists but no one should pay per an entire life for errors committed in the past.

Highly recommended to everyone: from students to common people.

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori