Amazon has propelled Jeff Bezos from bookseller to tech titan. He’s now the richest man on the planet. Former high-level Amazon insiders reveal how he did it. It’s about knowing us, the customer, in minute detail. As Amazon extends ever deeper into our lives, what does its spectacular rise mean for us? Panorama: Amazon: What They Know About Us, BBC 2020
Not only is she [Alexa] listening to us, humans are too. ibid.
Amazon has the technology to know a lot about us. ibid.
What Google was doing was gathering vast amounts of data on millions of people without them being fully aware of it … Google was now making billions, and at the heart of it was data. It had become a new gold rush. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head VI Are We a Pigeon? Or Are We Dancer? ***** BBCiplayer 2021
One of the most pervasive mythologies … The world is too complicated for us as human beings to understand but nothing is too complicated for the machines and the data, for they can see the hidden reality under the surface. ibid.
Dominic Cummings worked as a political adviser for the Conservative Party, and he believed that all politicians, left and right, had completely lost touch with the people they claimed to represent … Cummings was fascinated by the founder of Complexity Theory … Cummings wanted to use data and computers to see the underlying patterns in modern society, and then use that knowledge to take power back from the unelected elites who had seized control. ibid.