| | |
|
AllysonChavezFirstEssay 5 - 08 Jan 2024 - Main.EbenMoglen
|
| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstEssay" |
|---|
[Second Draft] | | | | |
<
< | | | | | |
<
< |
HTML marquee Tag
| >
> | What Are We Even Talking About? That Thing We Call The Parasite | | | Introduction | | | | |
<
< | What Is The Network? | >
> | What Is The Network? | | | The Network is an organism made up of two types of cells, or fundamental structures, known as pipes and switches. Pipes physically carry signals (or packets of data), photons, and neurons between switches around the network. Switches, think of diamonds, determine which signals go to which network, to which pipes, and with what rules. This nervous system was meant to be flexible enough to allow everyone to learn whatever they want, wherever they want, regardless of ability to pay or government restrictions; it was meant to be a tool of knowledge. | |
<
< | The Parasite: A Venereal Disease that Feeds off Love | >
> | The Parasite: A Venereal Disease that Feeds off Love | | | What, then, is this thing that we keep referring to as The Parasite? The parasite is not the entire nerve system of the Internet but rather some software meant or hacked to work in ways that undermine human freedom. This network has memory. This memory is a log of the addresses data is coming and going to. The Parasite consists of software like Facebook that collects this data and sells it to government agencies. This behavior turned a tool of knowledge into a surveillance tool. | | | Even though the parasite metabolizes human attention, it is imperative to understand that it capitalizes off human fear. Applications like Tinder and Bumble help us fight against the fear of being alone; applications like X and Instagram also do this to an extent. Carrying a phone everywhere helps fight against the fear of getting lost or even kidnapped. Tracking devices and applications becomes reasonable to a mother who has had one of her children almost snatched off her arms. The parasite is then a venereal disease that feeds off human love and fear. | |
<
< | A Surveillance State Built on Maternal Love | >
> | ---++ A Surveillance State Built on Maternal Love | | | Anyone who knows me knows that I am a momma’s girl through and through. My mother left behind her other children and a Ph.D. in chemistry to clean corporate bathrooms in downtown Brooklyn for the opportunity to give me a better life. When she could no longer work cleaning, she did whatever job she could find: construction, cleaning houses, nannying, etc. She has sacrificed so much that it is hard for me to say no to her.
My mother has a lot of anxiety due to various traumatic experiences. When my brother, Edwin, was only a couple of months old, a woman tried to snatch my mother from my mother's arms. She once had to jump out of a moving cab when she noticed the driver driving past our house and told her to “not worry about it.” To top it all off, she is aware of the fact that I am a rape survivor. All these experiences have created a need to know my whereabouts -- this is where applications like Life360 come in to soothe that fear. Life360 allows my mother to know where I am at all times. It tells her when I get on and off a car, how long the ride was, how fast it went, and the exact trajectory. It even notifies her when my battery is low. My mother’s love has enabled companies like Life360 to create an actual surveillance state. What is parasitic is that life360 “is selling data on kids’ and families’ whereabouts to approximately a dozen data brokers who have sold data to virtually anyone who wants to buy it."
Companies can keep poking at mother’s fears to justify making money off our data. Life360’s CEO noted, " We see data as an important part of our business model that allows us to keep the core Life360 services free for the majority of our users, including features that have improved driver safety and saved numerous lives.”
The parasite did not develop my mother’s fears, but this fear is the problem the parasite promises to fix in exchange for human attention/data. | |
<
< |
| | | | |
<
< |
| | | | |
<
< | | >
> |
Yes, I think this uses the material better, and your ideas are both interesting and arrestingly presented. I think a reader who hadn't attended our park hours conversations might have trouble putting the pieces of this together, however. A structure that tied your point about maternal care and the anxieties the parasite relieves to the larger issues in a unified way would give the essay the impact it wants for a reader who didn't sit through the development phase.
| | |
| META TOPICMOVED | by="EbenMoglen" date="1698670011" from="LawNetSoc.TheParasiteEmbodiedTheQuiet-Not-SoBodyOfTheNetwork1stDraftAllysonChavez" to="LawNetSoc.AllysonChavezFirstEssay" |
|---|
|
|
|
|
|
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
|
|
| | |