Data Love: The Seduction and Betrayal of Digital Technologies

by Roberto Simanowski

Intelligence services, government administrations, businesses, and a growing majority of the population are hooked on the idea that big data can reveal patterns and correlations in everyday life. Initiated by software engineers and carried out through algorithms, big data has sparked a silent revolution. But algorithmic analysis and data mining are not simply byproducts of media development or the logical consequences of computation. They are the radicalization of the Enlightenment's quest for knowledge and progress. "Data Love" argues that the "cold civil war" of big data is taking place not between citizens or the citizen and government but within each one of us.

Roberto Simanowski elaborates on the changes data love have brought to the human condition while exploring the entanglements of those who--be it out of stinginess, convenience, ignorance, narcissism, or passion--contribute to the amassing of evermore data about their lives, leading to the statistical evaluation and individual profiling of their selves. Writing from a philosophical standpoint, Simanowski illustrates the social implications of technological development and retrieves the concepts, events, and cultural artifacts of past centuries to help decode the programming of our present.

Genres: Technology, Nonfiction, Philosophy

176 pages, Hardcover

First published June 30, 2014

About the author

Roberto Simanowski is a German scholar of media and cultural studies and the author of Digital Art and Meaning, Data Love, Facebook Society, Waste: A New Media Primer, and The Death Algorithm and Other Digital Dilemmas (the last two published by the MIT Press).

Reviews

[Kara Babcock · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is a school of thought rising in popularity which wants coding to become a mandatory subject in schools. I have some thoughts on this, but that is neither here nor there for this review. Rather, it’s just interesting that for all the talk of teaching kids to code because it will lead to “better jobs”, there isn’t much emphasis on teaching about the way Big Data is redefining our lives. From data mining to algorithms to the much-vaunted buzzword of 2015, the “blockchain” (blech), the explosion of computational capacity in the last two decades is literally changing the world, and we don’t talk enough about it. Oh, you see the headlines, the surface tech news. But unless a Snowden shows up and drops a payload of documents, it doesn’t make much of a ripple. And even these ripples subside.

Data Love: The Seduction and Betrayal of Digital Technologies is a very academic examination of the consequences of our society’s increasing dependence upon and fascination with data collection and analysis. Roberto Simanowski points out the tension inherent in this fascination: more data can help us be more efficient, make societies better—but it comes at the cost of privacy and security, and it is not always a neutral force.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher, Columbia University Press. The book appears to have been previously published in German two years ago but came out last week in this English edition. This would explain why I had a hard time getting through it, I think: the writing definitely sounds like it has been translated into English. Academic texts can be dry enough in one’s native tongue; translated texts can be even harder to grok sometimes.

And to be fair, I think I was anticipating something less academic and more pop culture-y, and that’s on me for not reading the description more carefully to pick out choice words like “philosophical”. So I went into Data Love expecting something on the order of The Numerati and instead got something closer to Reason, Faith, and Revolution (and we all know how that turned out).

Whatever the reasons, however, I’m still not fond of Data Love as an academic text. The organization is a mess. Simanowski jumps from topic to topic seemingly at random; I cannot for the life of me discern any governing thread or theme running through the book or any semblance of purpose to the chapters. This goes beyond being lost in translation (which only explains issues on a sentence/paragraph level) into being lost, period (at a chapter level). I’d finish a chapter, sit back, and go, “Wait, what did I learn from this?” Heaven forfend I ever had to read this as part of a philosophy course! Simanowski knows his stuff, cites people I’ve heard of (like Evgeny Morozov, that delightful Internet curmudgeon). Having gone to set it down on the page, however, he does not successfully organize his thoughts into coherent, easily summarized points.

So I gave up. I’m trying to do that more often these days.

Look, this is not a fatally flawed book. The subject matter is of interest to me, obviously, and I think if one is in the appropriate mood and one’s mind properly girded for an intense, introspective look down the mined rabbit hole of translated philosophy texts, then Data Love could be good. Don’t take my DNF as damning critique, but do take it as a warning that you can’t just jump into this one on a whim and expect to love it.

[Clare O'Beara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Consumers love data because people have always loved getting information, and now we can get just what we need, faster. Corporations and governments love data because they can see what to see or provide, and to whom and where. But we all know there has to be a down side. Data mining - digging into mountains of personal data - can lead to breaches of privacy, including some we don't yet recognise. Exploitation of this new resource is the subject of this book.

The text size is small and a certain amount of knowledge is assumed. Whether you have been reading about hacking or marketing or spy agencies, you'll probably know enough to jump in and swim.

Edward Snowden is cited at the start, revealing to the world just how much surveillance America ran on the rest of us. However then author Roberto Simanowski spends some time comparing the NSA to the Stasi and lingering on the running of Germany, past and present. He asks how we know what 'harmless' data will be used against citizens in the future. Well, I guess we do not. He goes on to brand one company swallowing up others and dominating the net as neo-colonialism, much as we see water companies from France or Spain buying up all the water supply of other nations.

The internet of things, and self-tracking devices like fitness watches and apps, collect a plenitude of data about individuals. Why do some people want to share that data? Don't forget, you can tell the app not to update your timeline or feed, if you even have one that is. Nobody's forcing you. Supermarkets and insurance firms aim to offer discounted services in return for some of that data. Again, they can only see what you share. Whether we need to have smart dustbins is another issue.

I've read far more detailed takes on European data and privacy laws, but you get here perhaps as much as you need: the German parliament voted to sell its citizens' data to advertising and credit agencies provided the citizens had not opted out, at almost 9pm on the day Germany played Italy in a football cup semi-finals in 2012. The new law was revoked only because privacy campaigners protested. Encryption is the protective method sought by hackers and leaks sites.

Many other publications are cited throughout the text, including philosophy works, 'Culture of Control' and the catchily titled 'Why the KGB wants you to join Facebook'. I note many German references. We get a lot of terms like quantification, conceptual representation and qualculation. Nanopublication, metadata frameworks and interoperability. Statistics merge with algorithms, in a new digital humanities concept. I find the text will interest a more specialised reader from this point, and that is why I am not giving a higher rating. However, there is plenty to interest any concerned reader and this book could point you in the right directions if you want to seek more digestible materials. There are 20 pages of notes and references at the end.

I'll add a final word: if you don't want to be bombarded with net ads for a service or product, don't use your favourite search engine to look it up but go to a more general site or Wikipedia, and look it up there.

I downloaded an ARC from Net Galley for an unbiased review.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's ironic, after reading this book, to be willingly handing over my personal data to a social media website owned by Jeff Bezos. It illustrates the addiction that we have in tracking, mapping, and displaying our data for all to see-- and to use the forum to check and track the status of friends. Data Love is a good essayistic overview of sociocultural problems that the Data Industry currently wreaks. He rebukes the individual's moral falling in voluntarily handing over personal data in return for pleasure, convenience, and the cheap sense of community we garner at the expense of our very sense of self. It shows the dire need for political and legislative reform over how much we allow businesses to hawk over our personal information and daily activity in return for "innovation" and "elegant experiences."

[Erkan Saka · Rating 2 out of 5]

Such a fatalistic account. I would not disagree with most of the arguments but they are framed in such a way that it does not trigger a new discourse. A new argument that could enrich the ongoing public debate. Essayistic with good specific examples. But the overall message is that we are doomed. Maybe at the time of its first publication back in Germany, it served to raise consciousness but no more now, I believe.

[Tanja · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book on Netgalley in exchange for a review.

This book is a very philosophical take on the problem of privacy during the Internet age. It gets a bit too philosophical at times, to the point where I was wondering if maybe I’m not quite qualified enough to understand it.

The book is full of predictions about the future of technology and how all the data that big tech companies have about their users is going to impact the lives of said users. There are plenty of examples like Google, Facebook and Snapchat that have users worldwide, which makes their impact huge. But the book was originally published in Germany, so the author uses quite a few German examples and sometimes seems too focused on Germany.

I agree with the author that people should be better educated on what actually happens with all the information they put online. The things you write and the pictures you post can affect your life in ways you never expected. The problem is, you can’t always predict exactly what can be used against you. Sometimes I felt like the author’s predictions bordered on paranoid, but then I would read a quote like this and be like ‘Ok, maybe he’s right’:

This became clearer most recently when Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt publicly declared in 2009, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,” and threatened in 2010, “We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.”

The idea that you should never do anything you don’t want other people to know about is ridiculous – but this book is a good warning about the dangers of oversharing. After all, if nobody knows about it, it can’t be used against you.

[Patrick Pilz · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't finish about one in ten books. This one makes the list. The balance of personal protection and gain from mass data collection vs. invasion and privacy and abuse is a matter of cultural context. This book is written largely from a German perspective with their cultural bad experience in mind.

It is extremely tiring to read, which may be related to the fact that Germans like to express themselves in the utmost complicated way, leaving the translator little room to make the story easy. The theme of the book is actually easy, but it drifts into a humanisticly advanced type of language that makes it extremely hard to follow without constantly checking Wikipedia on what the author is trying to say. This is a book with seven seals.

I admit that reading it in English may have been a bad idea, but I will not even think about trying in in German.

[Armel Dagorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting (and, at 176 pages, short enough) read. Simanoski gives the reader a good overview of what's happening in this strange new world of ours. It's a good mix of straight-forward facts (some of which most readers/internet users would be aware of), of potential consequences recent changes and policies could bring about, and of more theoretical insights into what private/public means today, and what our data-centred lives might be like in years to come.

I enjoyed how Simanoski at times tried to hint at some solutions to the problems we face, to have a look at one branch of the many possibles. There are also a lot of concrete examples of the madness a unique data-driven approach can be (for instance, the investment company whose shares go up whenever Ann Hathaway stars in a movie, because Hathaway is part of their name...).

A great read!

[Bernard O'Leary · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rambling mess that feels like a literary theorist boring on about how terrible computers are. Individuals paragraphs of it are interesting but there's no real development of any of the ideas presented. A disappointment.