Eight years ago, the link aggregator Digg caused an uproar: content would be ordered based on user activity. Today, we take that for granted. In 2010, it spelled the end of Digg. A commenter with the handle blue_beetle lamented, “If you’re not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.” Simplistic, sure, but it got the point across: we had entered an age in which entire business models could rest on the idea of collecting your information—not something we should necessarily be comfortable with. Fast forward eight years, and the blue_beetle’s comment is as relevant as ever. We have come to accept data as the basis for every online transaction, a condition as obvious as it is easy to forget.
Stanford Sphere 