In the final 15 years, a linked sequence of unprecedented applied sciences have modified the expertise of personhood throughout a lot of the world. It’s estimated that just about 70% of the human inhabitants of the Earth at present possesses a smartphone, and these gadgets represent about 95% of web access-points on the planet. Globally, on common, individuals appear to spend near half their waking hours screens, and amongst younger individuals within the wealthy world the quantity is an efficient deal increased than that.
Historical past teaches that new applied sciences at all times make attainable new types of exploitation, and this primary reality has been spectacularly exemplified by the rise of society-scale digital platforms. It has been pushed by a outstanding new method of extracting cash from human beings: name it “human fracking”. Simply as petroleum frackers pump high-pressure, high-volume detergents into the bottom to drive a bit monetisable black gold to the floor, human frackers pump high-pressure, high-volume detergent into our faces (within the type of limitless streams of addictive slop and maximally disruptive user-generated content material), to drive a slurry of human consideration to the floor, the place they will gather it, and take it to market.
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