We make money, not art

December 18, 2017 9:44 PM

Regine interviews Vladan Joler about his exhibition Exploration Forensics, which is "a collection of maps and documents created as a result of investigations conducted in the last few years by the SHARE Lab. The maps will help visitors explore the invisible layers of contemporary technological black boxes and their fractal supply chains, exposing various forms of hidden labour and the exploitation of material resources and data." This is an exhibiton of SHARE Lab at Aksioma, in Ljubljana.

The Human Fabric Of The Facebook Pyriamid

In order to visualise the connections of Facebook’s (FB) management,[9] i.e. its board of directors and advisors, and two executive levels, we used publicly available information provided by the Official Board and Crunchbase websites.[10] For every person on these lists we analysed educational and professional background as presented in his or her official biography. It should be borne in mind that all of these people are in the public eye and that their biographies are not secret. Thus, all of the given information is available to everyone who wishes to find it, and our use of it is not a result of any illegal or covert activity.
The following network should help us deepen the understanding of the connections within the board itself and the ties between the Facebook and the industry, the ties of Facebook and the government, and the ties of Facebook with civic organisations (such as e.g. think-tanks).

Vladan Joler shows How Facebook's Tentacles Reach Further Than You Think

posted by the man of twists and turns (5 comments total)

Just diving in to this, but 2 things strike me already:
1. Probably we should try to think about alternative business models and platforms that are not based on surveillance capitalism. <<< This the smartest thing I've read this year.
2. Not joining FB may be the smartest thing I've ever done in my entire life.
posted by pjsky at 6:14 AM on December 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

This is very interesting work. It's hard if not impossible to get at the platform architectures underpinning this, even with a lot of technical background. Vladan makes it accessible, and the personal privacy and security implications of using this architecture - at least, it's the tip of the iceberg. And this talk is just on social media, and does not address (and I'm not complaining that it does not) moves into IoT.
It's fascinating to me how google/fb/etc. can be seen in some ways as the exact flipside of NSA surveillance, except that we welcome them.
posted by carter at 6:24 AM on December 19, 2017

Probably we should try to think about alternative business models and platforms that are not based on surveillance capitalism.

I'm sure that would be awesome. And then what? Congratulate ourselves on how clever our analysis was? Surveillance capitalism is here, and thinking about "alternative business models" won't make it go away.
posted by thelonius at 6:42 AM on December 19, 2017

That strikes me as an uncharitable interpretation. "Think about" is often used in English to mean "consider doing", not just literally "cogitate theoretically about". It seems pretty clear to me that this person isn't just saying "cogitate theoretically about alternative business models".
posted by inconstant at 7:02 AM on December 19, 2017 [1 favorite]

Fascinating, depressing. Great execution except for text-as-images, ugh. Also: "...when it comes to the Microsoft or the Apple nod?" or node?
posted by pagrus at 1:44 PM on December 19, 2017