Juggling Dynamite

Danielle was a guest with Jim Goddard on This Week in Money, talking about recent developments in the world economy and markets starting at 11:30 on the playbar.  Here is a direct audio link.

Ever since the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook abuse of personal data was revealed to the public in 2016, there has been an explosion of “agree” and “accept” buttons we must now click to move through the internet.  But what are we actually agreeing to?  And how can we give informed consent without non-predatory alternatives to choose from?  Abusing trust has become the dominant model, and the costs of this are evident everywhere that we look.

Shoshana Zuboff is Professor emerita at Harvard Business School and author of the new book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.  Big tech may have stolen our data while democracy slept, but a new awakening phase has arrived and anti-trust actions are an obvious next step.

Corporations have created a new kind of marketplace out of our private human experiences. That is the conclusion of an explosive new book that argues big tech platforms like Facebook and Google are elephant poachers, and our personal data is ivory tusks.  Here is a direct video link.

Last weekend we caught a screening of the 2018 film Stan & Ollie starring Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly as comedy-duo Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.  The film is funny and delightful and offers a rare, heart-warming glimpse of two friends working through the ups and downs of business, career and friendship with humour and integrity.

Laurel and Hardy were at the height of their popularity during the depression from the late 1920’s to mid-40’s when audiences greatly needed a wholesome laugh; so too today!  It’s available for pre-order on iTunes this month, so should be available for rent there shortly.  Here is a direct video link.