Networked Me

Rebecca thinks a lot more about Wesch’s comment that every time we tag a photo, and so on, “we are teaching the machine”. Absolutely. FaceBook is so valuable not because so many use it, but because it can farm what we do and use that data to make new knowledge for marketing, and sell that. So every like, dislike, ad we click, literally adds to the ‘intelligence’ of their systems and their financial value. It is our behaviour, accumulated and then ‘flipped’ into data, then knowledge, that FaceBook relies upon. The social front end is just a siphon for the other stuff, the same way a supermarket loyalty card is just a small price to pay to know exactly what products you buy, how often, when (and of course where you shop and where you live). We leave media trails today, FaceBook is a closed community to catch as many of your media trails as possible (video, places you visit, photos, likes, posts, friendships), and to make money from them. This is one consequence of what we call a ubiquitous network. The network, unlike a book, is always with you. Ready.