Franklin Foer

While I confess that I didn't agree with much of this book, I found it to be fascinating.

Foer basically argues that companies that are dominating data collection (namely Facebook, Google, and Amazon) are monopolies because they are able to use that data to (unfairly) compete. He is critical of the fact that government has allowed these monopolies to evolve and that consumers are making a bargain with the devil, trading off freedom for efficiency.

What he fails to do, to my satisfaction, is indicate what we should do about it. He seems to have some vague ideas about the government's ability to protect privacy and that if the upper echelons of society would all just elevate reading on paper (newspapers, magazines, books) to the level it deserves, it would somehow permeate the rest of society. He has a lot more faith in the political machine than I do.

Personally, it seems to me that the horse is out of the barn, and there's going to be no reining it in. Foer seems to imply that no company will ever compete with the Google, Facebook, and Amazon triad because only they have the computing power necessary to crunch all the data, and they are the only ones who have collected all the data to crunch. While right now, the latter may be true, I am pretty sure computing power will continue to get cheaper and more accessible. Perhaps companies will form data conglomerates to pool their data for better leverage. I believe a lot of this data is already available for sale, so not sure it's as proprietary as Foer implies.

However, I loved the way Foer makes his case. The book is filled with passages that make you think and interwoven with historical comparisons that provide context. He strikes me as pretty biased in his thought process (the guy was an editor), but if you take it as a long opinion piece, it's a good read.… (más)

Franklin Foer (FF) legt mit seinen Recherchen und Gedanken auf 272 Seiten ein ganz hervorragendes Buch über die Wurzeln des Silicon Valley, seine ursprünglichen Macher, Philosophien und Versprechungen dar bzw. das, was sich heute daraus entwickelt hat. Seine Ausführungen zu den 60er Jahren waren mir in vielen Teilen neu und hoch spannend.

FF hat den heute entstandenen Super-Monopolisten-Komplex im Visier, der mit GAFA abgekürzt wird: Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon. Im Deutschen wäre das Gaffen eine gute Umschreibung der dabei entstandenen Probleme, welches sich allerdings durch umfassende Sammlung von Daten über jeden Einzelnen komplettiert, die wiederum sehr bald und selbst-lernend uns in den Würgegriff nehmen.

"Der Konzern (Facebook) glaubt, er habe die Sozialpsychologie entschlüsselt und kenne seine Nutzer besser als sie sich selbst." (S. 95)

Wer sich dagegen wehren möchte, lese dieses spannend und verständlich geschriebene Buch.… (más)