Before age was roughly taken, companies like Ford or General Motors used people's time to make a profit.
Today, companies like Facebook, Google (where it all started, so to speak) use your attention to make a profit.
What do Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Huawei, Samsung and... well, practically all modern technology companies have in common?
They buy and sell information about you.
Sometimes it seems quite innocent. You signed your Facebook profile that you're 34, so Facebook sells this anonymised profile information to advertisers who only want to show ads to 34-year-olds. In theory, you get more useful, better advertising and you have given up very little.
But that "I gave away very little information about myself"... Well, it adds up. Nowadays, all sorts of companies know so much about you that you don't even realise they know.
For example - why do you think the MoQ app is opening up, making it easier to pay in cafes where you used to pay with untraceable cash?
And do you think the Bolt app doesn't track where you're going, where you're coming from and at what time of day?
And you think Delfi.lt doesn't know what pages you browsed, how much time you spent reading, where you stopped reading and how much time you spent writing comments?
...Of course, when you don't use this information, it might not seem so bad. What will they find out? After all, the information is anonymised anyway! Isn't it?
It's just that every time you use modern smart products, you also give away some information about yourself. Your buying habits. Your travel habits. Your browsing habits. Your attention habits. What's important to you and what's not important to you. Your... mountain of information particles.
I am not saying that we should separate.
Just note - if the product is free, that means the product is you. And it means you're paying with your independence.
...And if companies can provide you with "an increasingly personalised and better product", how do you think they know all this about you? Personally walked behind them? No. It's just that your every moment on smart devices - and web pages - is being tracked.
