I haven’t really followed news about Cambridge Analytica Scandal involving Facebook. Whatever little I know about it has come from the tidbits I have gathered during various conversations I have had with my friends during lunch breaks and the evening strolls. What I now know is that the controversy is indeed of epic proportions. Influencing American Presidential Elections and that too which led to one of the most controversial results in American History. It is mind-fucking.
The plundering of natural resources – land, gold, oil – has happened every time these resources have been first discovered. These were first order plundering. During this period, those who first saw the future in a resource organized a global campaign and lay their claim without much resistance.
These riches are the new age Oil. In these endless rows and columns, stored in far-flung warehouses, resides secrets which humans have been searching for decades. How we think, what makes us tick. What are our greatest fears? The source of our happiness and sorrow. How we act day in and day out, what we wished today, what we want now, and with how the latest algorithms are coming up, what we will end up wanting months from now.
New age Plunderers – Google & Facebook.
Now Facebook involvement or not, in Cambridge Analytica Scandal, the data was waiting to be exploited. When the combustible material of such high intensity is stored in one place, it is bound to catch fire. It’s a matter of one little spark, one little nudge, and voila – the explosion. There is a famous principle by Chekov which says that “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired.” Only that in this act of “Data Revolution,” not one but many guns have appeared, and what we have heard is only the first of the many that will be sounded in time to come.
Also published on Medium.