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A review by rick2
Targeted: The Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower's Inside Story of How Big Data, Trump, and Facebook Broke Democracy and How It C by
3.0
Pretty good. Very interesting. The Cambridge Analytica stuff is terrifying. As a book, it a good portrait of how “good people can do bad things.” But while the CA parts are riveting, I found myself getting frustrated at the blindness Brittany followed the Blockchain trend as a redemptive arc.
Blockchain is NOT the solution to privacy. Maybe in 20 years when the energy demands are lower and unforeseen magic innovations have fundamentally changed computing. But for now, in 2020, blockchain is a slow, inefficient, energy intensive way to partially solve some of this. Frankly, having a single point of failure, like a digital ledger, seems awful. It’s amazing to see so many people who dont have technical knowledge go gangbusters for blockchain. It was one of my pet peeves of 2019, and for reasons like this.
I’m not sure Brittany is the person who should be doing privacy advocacy. Business development is not technical know how. I should know, I was in biz-dev and have shifted to the engineering side of things. It’s a long painful process of filling huge gaps in your knowledge. Her technical explanations seem very Jedi-hand-wave. And it would make sense that solutions stemming from that would be wonting.
It seems that the author was looking for an easy fix to many of the privacy issues she felt were being overlooked. Blockchain represented an "out," a sort of release valve to the cognitive dissonance being felt by an idealist in a predatory work environment. The way a drowning man may cling to a chunk of flotsam to keep afloat, it does not represent the ideal flotation device, but fulfills a need in a time of crisis.
Blockchain is NOT the solution to privacy. Maybe in 20 years when the energy demands are lower and unforeseen magic innovations have fundamentally changed computing. But for now, in 2020, blockchain is a slow, inefficient, energy intensive way to partially solve some of this. Frankly, having a single point of failure, like a digital ledger, seems awful. It’s amazing to see so many people who dont have technical knowledge go gangbusters for blockchain. It was one of my pet peeves of 2019, and for reasons like this.
I’m not sure Brittany is the person who should be doing privacy advocacy. Business development is not technical know how. I should know, I was in biz-dev and have shifted to the engineering side of things. It’s a long painful process of filling huge gaps in your knowledge. Her technical explanations seem very Jedi-hand-wave. And it would make sense that solutions stemming from that would be wonting.
It seems that the author was looking for an easy fix to many of the privacy issues she felt were being overlooked. Blockchain represented an "out," a sort of release valve to the cognitive dissonance being felt by an idealist in a predatory work environment. The way a drowning man may cling to a chunk of flotsam to keep afloat, it does not represent the ideal flotation device, but fulfills a need in a time of crisis.