It's A Journey, Not A Prank

Back in 1992, a smart little film called “Sneakers” hit the theaters. It was a moderate hit, but has, over the years, evolved into a classic cult film. 

For good reason. The film was prescient in its focus on the power of data: 

The world isn’t run by weapons any more. Or energy, or money. It’s run by little ones and zeroes. Little bits of data. It’s all just electrons. 

I don’t care. 

I don’t expect other people to understand this, but I do expect you to understand this. We started this journey together. 

It wasn’t a journey, Cos. It was a prank. 

There’s a war out there, old friend.  A world war. And it’s not about who’s got the most bullets. It’s about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think. It’s all about the information.

Unfortunately, this clip leaves out the least prescient part of what the film had to say about data. Here’s the rest: 

[Cosmo] Don’t you know the places we can go with this?

[Bishop] Yeah, I do. There’s nobody there.

If you think nobody’s there, well, you’re a naïve little soul, aren’t you? 

Google, for one, is there. Read this. 

It’s a little spooky, to tell the truth. 

Even I, a non-traveler, know the Frommer’s name. Frommer means travel. To Google, it meant something simpler. Data. 

[I]t appears that Google, despite selling the Frommer's name, has retained the brand's social data and is integrating it with what is now called Zagat Travel. “Google is keeping all of the followers that Frommer’s accrued on Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare, Google+, YouTube and Pinterest.” PaidContent writes. “These thousands—or more likely millions—of accounts are valuable because they represent a huge collection of serious travel enthusiasts.” 

There’s a war out there, old friend.  A world war. And it’s not about who’s got the most bullets. It’s about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think. It’s all about the information. 

This is much, much more than just a prank.

And Google isn't alone. Just two weeks ago, Amazon.com announced it was purchasing Goodreads (an internet book review website that woefully fails to recognize the value of retaining a space between its words).

We put lots of data on the web. Tons of it, per experts like Clay Shirky and others. The vast, vast majority of it, we put there voluntarily. 

But companies and governments and who knows who else is watching. And collecting it all. Some so they can sell stuff to us – old hat, absolutely. Some, so they can steal stuff from us, also old hat. And some, because, well, there’s that thrill of knowing. And of lording it over the rest of us that they know. 

I’m not necessarily saying this is all sinister stuff; there’s good that comes from data collection, obviously. But it’s clear that those who don’t have our best intentions at heart are just as eager to gather our data as those whose intentions are pure as the driven snow. 

Cos’ work for his quaint “family men,” in the light of the people eavesdropping on the massive amounts of data we’re shoveling into the waiting maw that is the web, well, in the words of another fictional character, in this case, Former Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfuss of the Surete, “makes the Cosa Nostra look like the Vienna Boys’ Choir.”