Big Brother Is Listening, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #304 | @MDWorld
December 10, 2012 Mike Gold 6 Comments
Isn’t technology wonderful?
Having a very low boredom threshold, my daughter and I live in a house that would cause Ted Kaczynski to have a coronary. If we have nothing to do, it’s because we want to have nothing to do. But even here in La Casa del Oro, we have our limits.
According to the website VR Zone, Verizon just acknowledged they filed for a patent last May on a DVR that can listen and maybe even watch what’s going on in the room and send to your teevee commercials based upon what it thinks it hears.
“To illustrate,” Verizon says, “the ambient action may include the user talking to, cuddling with, fighting with, wrestling with, playing a game with, competing with, and/or otherwise interacting with the other user … The ambient action may include the user interacting with a separate media content access device (e.g., a media content access device separate from the media content access device presenting the media content).”
So if Verizon perceives you to be exercising, it might give you Nautilus commercials. If it detects the presence of children – and, evidently, it can – then it’ll broadcast commercials for toys and games. If it hears barking, you get doggie treat commercials. If your speech starts slowing down and you exhibit short-term memory problems, you’ll probably get spots for Froot Loops and Oreos.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “what if Verizon detects me making out? What will it try to sell me?” Condoms and boner pills? No, it would be too late. Same thing with provocative lingerie. And I think the FTC banished those people who make the stuff that was supposed to elongate one’s johnson. Evidently, and sadly, it didn’t. Of course, if the eavesdropping machine detects the presence of only one human being, the commercial possibilities broaden measurably.
Computers are completely literal: they define their actions based upon the input they receive. Because of this, mistakes will happen. Let’s say you’re making out with a person who is sotto voce. Verizon might interpret your behavior as a solo act and give you commercials for dating services sold by very distracting models. Models so distracting that your attention shifts from your silent partner to the boob tube. You can get into a lot of trouble here.
Sure, cable TV has always been two-way and providers often track what’s being watched and sells this information to market research services. Some will even analyze your choices and make suggestions about what you might like, although with most providers you can turn this “service” off. You might as well; they’re rarely helpful and, to my experience, never understand my predilections.
I don’t think Verizon’s proposed eavesdropping machine is likely to be well received – at least, not at first. But with cable fees increasing and programming providers demanding higher compensation, Verizon just might pass some of their commercial localization profits along to you. Would you allow this machine into your living room for, say, free basic service?
Hmmm. Then again, Verizon’s new brain box just might be the greatest boon to bootlegging since the invention of the Internet.
Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking rock, blues and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com , every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, rebroadcast three times during the week – check the website above for times. Gold also joins Martha Thomases and Michael Davis as a weekly columnist at www.comicmix.com where he pontificates on matters of four-color.
Vinnie Bartilucci
December 10, 2012 - 7:13 pm
The simple argument is how will the information be used, and can it be used by anyone else for more “national security” purposes? I can’t see a way they can use, say, my purchasing habits at the store via my membership card, in a way that get me arrested.
Case in point – EZ-Pass. If they ever start using it to clock people’s speeds, watch their use plummet. So too these new monitoring devices the auto insurance companies are trying to tal people into. I’ve got no desire to invite into my car a device that will allow my insirance company to raise my rates or cancel my policy cause they think I’m not driving safely.
So will this go over? I can’t see how – a microphone right in my TV that can track my actions, who would want that?
Other than Xbox owners, that is.
George Haberberger
December 11, 2012 - 6:31 am
“I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “what if Verizon detects me making out? ”
Uh, no. I thinking, “Why the hell would anyone consent to being spied on in their own home?”
Information about what program is being watched kind of goes with buying the cable/satellite service. But listening to or even watching activities that have nothing to do with the broadcast is absolutely a deal-breaker for me.
R. Maheras
December 11, 2012 - 9:48 am
Who’d a thunk it? While nuttier than a Payday candy bar, recluse and anti-technology maven Ted K. was a visonary.
Next thing you’ll be telling me Google and other major Web sites record and analyze my searches and clicks.
Rick Oliver
December 11, 2012 - 11:29 am
Your DVR is already analyzing your viewing habits, just like Google is analyzing all my viewing habits since I only watch teevee shows via Netflix and Hulu. Hulu also seems to think that I want to tell them more about myself by offering to customize my “ad experience”, based on my responses to questions and reactions to various ads. I ignore these offers.
Verizon’s gambit is, of course, a quantum leap in removing the last shreds of your privacy. A few years ago, I would have dismissed this as a non-starter. But that was before people thought it was a good idea to post their bank robbery exploits on their Facebook pages, and many younger people I know think nothing of posting every detail of their personal lives on Facebook or other internet venues.
Mike Gold
December 11, 2012 - 12:25 pm
Hmmm. Good point — privacy concerns don’t seem to bother some folks, and not just the young ‘uns. Fools like Anthony Weiner come to mind. In this era of Photoshop, does emailing pictures of a penis, purportedly yours, seem like a good selling point?
Back when, the FTC sued (the temporarily late but still lamented) Wonder Bread because they could not prove their product actually helped build bodies 12 ways. Do the sexters think an emailed dick will elicit a response of “oh, yeah, prove it?”
Maybe.
Way back in 1986, John McNaughton made a movie called Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. It was a fun-filled laugh epic about a couple guys who ran around killing folks, videotaping their exploits as they went along. They considered this a good idea; I considered this “evidence.” Time has shown this to be the beginning of a sea change, and for the first time I felt I was on the ripe side of the generation gap.
Rene
December 11, 2012 - 12:33 pm
One generation’s horror story is the next generation’s quite comfortable reality.
Lots of great writers from the 1920s and 1930s made their careers by giving voice to their panic at how soul-destroying awful mass-produced modern world was. Lovecraft, Tolkien, D. H. Lawrence, Huxley, Fitzgerald. And now we take for granted what caused them to shit their pants.
Loss of privacy is just like that. I still associate Big Brother with 1984. Lots of my younger friends associate it with the TV show.
R. Maheras
December 11, 2012 - 12:35 pm
Based on everything I’ve been following science-wise during the past 30-40 years, I’m convinced that 20-30 years hence there will be no such thing as privacy, regardless of where one lives.
This will include, to some degree, even your thoughts. After all, the brain is fundamentally an unshielded electromagnetic computing device which emanates weak electromagnetic fields when it operates. Since we are already at a point where we can passively amplify and monitor which portions of the brain are functioning at any given point in time, and since we have a pretty good roadmap now of brain functional areas, we can make good guesses what’s going on inside the head of a passerby, mood-wise.
Initially, it will likely be general states of mind, such as hostile, passive, aggressive, relaxed, happy, sad, etc.
But it may not be long before we can actually decipher thoughts, word-by-word or “scene-by-scene,” once we break the common code of brain electronic impulses at the individual neuron level — which, like any other code-breaking process, may not be as hard as one would think.
Mike Gold
December 11, 2012 - 1:35 pm
There could be a back-lash, Russ. Totally different from the sundry survivalists and doomsday preppers. Not Ludites. Just… hermits of a sort, refusing to employ any device that interferes with their individual concept of privacy. They’ll have electricity and microwave ovens and such, but anything two-way is verboten. Internet, phones, broadcasting… gone. Home schooling taken to the max. The road show to THX-1138.
I suspect this would already be a big deal if we could live without the banks.
Rick Oliver
December 11, 2012 - 2:22 pm
And they laughed when I insisted on wearing a tinfoil hat wherever I went.
Mike Gold
December 11, 2012 - 3:03 pm
Damn. I thought you had joined Devo.
R. Maheras
December 11, 2012 - 4:50 pm
Rick — A couple of years ago here in LA, I saw a guy on the bus twice who put a metal plate under his feet while standing, and while sitting, a metal plate under his butt and under his feet. He also wore a normal-looking baseball cap — normal-looking until he nodded off, tilted his head forward, and the cap fell off. Of course, it was lined with tinfoil. I almost laughed out loud when that cap plopped to the floor!
But the poor, deluded fool! As a former electronics technician, I could tell his “brain probe” countermeasures, if ever needed, wouldn’t work. Why? Simple. They weren’t inter-wired and grounded to the bus chassis.
R. Maheras
December 11, 2012 - 5:01 pm
Mike — Backlash? I wonder. Things that would have provoked a widespread privacy backlash 40 years ago don’t even raise an eyebrow for most folks.
But I guess, if you think about it, we’re going full circle back to the tribal days when everyone in the tribe knew everyone else’s business.
Mike Gold
December 11, 2012 - 5:58 pm
That’s one damn big tribe there, Brother R.
Given what I DON’T watch on teevee, it occurs to me that the concept of “this is nobody’s business” is restricted to but a few.
Rene
December 12, 2012 - 3:59 am
Russ, the thing is, 40 years ago they thought this kind of technology would be used by all-powerful governments to crush the life of the little guy*, just for laughs. But as things turned out, it’s just corporations selling stuff so they can sell you even more stuff.
* Except if the little guy happens to be a Muslim and is even slightly involved in anti-American activities. Then I suppose most people, even “libertarians”, are okay with a huge government using any sort of shady surveillance.
Mike Gold
December 12, 2012 - 8:20 am
Interesting point. I wonder if the current crop of libertarians do indeed feel that way.
R. Maheras
December 12, 2012 - 10:07 am
Rene — The thing is, this technology can and will be abused at both private and public (government) levels. For example… remember the recent scandal where UK newspapers were hacking into peoples cell phones to get tips on juicy scoops? That would have been very difficult, if not impossible, for a newspaper to do on any wide scale 50 years ago. Now damn near anyone can do it.
Government agency can now monitor unbelievable amounts of data and communications on a scale that would have been impossible for them 50 years ago.
Then again, knowing how little the average Schmoe cares about such things — if the average Schmoe can even comprehend them — I know there will probably never be a widespread backlash, so I’m resigned to the fact that progress will press on whether I like it or not. The Genie is out of the bottle and he ain’t going back in.
Rene
December 12, 2012 - 10:16 am
Ideally, Libertarians should be anti-war and anti-interventionism, and the last people to jump on the Islamophobic bandwagon. In practice, this is not what I’ve seen. I don’t think they’re any more bothered by big government spying on Muslims than any other Conservative or Liberal.
Rene
December 12, 2012 - 10:25 am
Russ, I agree with you on this. But I understand the viewpoint of the average Schmoe. They are not bothered if apparently the only people harmed by invasion of privacy are celebrities and muslim activists.
Rene
December 12, 2012 - 2:36 pm
Mike – I also wonder what is it about the recommendation features that never seem to work? The one I remember is Amazon’s.
I used to be a fan of George R. R. Martin’s A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE (a bit before it was fashionable) and bought all the books, and Amazon kept sending recommendations of every crappy doorstopper fantasy trilogy ever made to cash in on Tolkien. While the thing I liked about ASOIAF was how refreshingly different from THE LORD OF THE RINGS it was.
They kept recommending STAR TREK, because I was a fan of BABYLON 5, I suppose. My interest in STAR TREK has always been casual, at best.
And lots of times Amazon and other sites recommended movies based on the actors of movies I bought in the past. But I’m not actually an actor fan. Yes, I enjoyed SE7EN and FIGHT CLUB and 12 MONKEYS, but not because they all had Brad Pitt.
Mike Gold
December 12, 2012 - 4:23 pm
Rene, any time I start to believe my interests and the interests of those with whom I associate have anything to do with the intergalactic groupthink, all I have to do is look at any of these computer generated “recommendations.” I’ve been with Amazon since Bezos was a baby, and to this day it doesn’t know me at all.
This is why I can never file anything by genre.
Rick Oliver
December 13, 2012 - 9:58 am
Not all recommendation engines are created equal, and some are better than others. The primary variables they use to generate recommendations are: 1)What else have you bought? and 2)What did other people who bought those things buy? If they have demographic information like your age or gender or location, they’ll throw those into the model too.
This is, of course, a vast over-simplification of the process. The goal is to identify groups of people with similar tastes and similar purchasing patterns.
I’ve noticed that the Netflix recommendation engine is remarkably bad. The more movies I rate, the worse the recommendations — but then Netflix isn’t going to get any additional revenue from me if I watch more movies, so they don’t have much incentive.
R. Maheras
December 13, 2012 - 2:43 pm
To date, despite the fact that I’ve been a regular customer of theirs for years, Amazon has never recommended anything I either wanted or needed. Such recommendation engines are either really dumb, or they are in such an early stage, they are simply ineffective. A waste of electrons, if you ask me.
Rick Oliver
December 13, 2012 - 3:21 pm
In the specific case of Amazon, I think it has actually been quite successful for them. It has occasionally made recommendations that interested me, but not often enough for me to discount the possibility that it’s just random chance.