Link to 5 summaries of relevant articles, books or videos in 200 words

ESSAY: You Are the Product by John Lanchester

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n16/john-lanchester/you-are-the-product

The article is about Facebook changing its ‘mission statement’ ‘making the world more open and connected’.' and the writer analyses the strategies over the years. I thought it was fascinating to read that Zuckenburg had studied, next to Computer Science, Psychology. And that Facebook’s first external investor Peter Thiel studies philosophy with a great interested in René Girard, his big idea was something he called ‘mimetic desire’. Human beings are born with a need for food and shelter. Once these fundamental necessities of life have been acquired, we look around us at what other people are doing and wanting, and we copy them. In Thiel’s summary, the idea is ‘that imitation is at the root of all behavior’. Over the years there are several strategies developed to manipulate the people:

The Filter Bubble: Only connect with people who agree with each other.

If the product is free, you are the product. Facebook’s customers aren’t the people who are on the site: its customers are the advertisers who use its network and who relish its ability to direct ads to receptive audiences. Therefore it doesn't matter if the content on the site is true.

To take the huge amount of information Facebook has about its ‘community’ and use it to let advertisers target ads with a specificity never known before, in any medium. Martínez: ‘It can be demographic in nature (e.g. 30-to-40-year-old females), geographic (people within five miles of Sarasota, Florida), or even based on Facebook profile data (do you have children; i.e. are you in the mommy segment?).’

Get friends of these women to post a ‘sponsored story’ on a targeted consumer’s news feed, so it doesn’t feel like an ad. As Zuckerberg said when he introduced Facebook Ads, Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend

connect a phone ID and add it to the Facebook ID, Put it together with the rest of the online activity: not just every site that is visited, but every click that's been made.– the Facebook button tracks every Facebook user, whether they click on it or not. Since the Facebook button is pretty much ubiquitous on the net, this means that Facebook sees you, everywhere.

Have partnerships with the old-school credit firms, Know who everybody was, where they lived, and everything they’d ever bought with plastic in a real-world offline shop.

Organise social scientists at the company to manipulate some people’s news feeds to see what effect, if any, it had on their emotions.

Offering internet connectivity to remote villages in India, with the proviso that the range of sites on offer should be controlled by Facebook.

A project involving a solar-powered drone called the Aquila, which has the wingspan of a commercial airliner, weighs less than a car, and when cruising uses less energy than a microwave oven. The idea is that it will circle remote, currently unconnected areas of the planet, for flights that last as long as three months at a time. It connects users via laser and was developed in Bridgwater, Somerset.

Perhaps the new mission could be that Zuckerberg would run for president, the early signals Zuck has sent out, like the fifty-state pretending-to-give-a-shit tour, the thoughtful-listening pose he’s photographed in while sharing milkshakes in an Iowa diner.

BOOK: Post-Truth: The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back by Matthew D'ancona

I was specifically drawn to the 'How to Fight Back' description on the cover. This chapter starts with some solutions whereby we have to count on the Gatekeepers such as google and facebook to acknowledge their responsibility. Personally, I wouldn't count on this since they are a big cause of the problem in the first place. The writer also put's hope in (BBC's) journalism, The BBC tries to fact-check the most popular outliers in Facebook fair enough, but quite a lot of work for a news station. Also, this could be interesting to compare this approach with Noam Chomsky's view on journalism. Further along, it claims that Post-truth is an emotional phenomenon. It concerns the attitude to truth rather than truth itself. The counter-attack should be therefor emotionally intelligent. In the last page one of biggest conclusions would be that: If people want an end to the post-truth era they must want it themselves. We often regret our early passivity only when it is too late.

In general, it was an interesting book for my thesis, it also directed me to new points of interests:

Nietzsche's quote ' there are no facts, only interpretations'
Nietzsche's point that Culture should replace Scripture.
Sara E. Gorman and Jack M Gorman, who researched, the Neurologic basis of why we ignore the facts that will save us?

Analisis of Video : E-talks - The Secret of food marketing

I've chosen to share my analysis of this video because there is a lot of my core interest into a view minutes, the rhetorics of the lecture, the video, the marketing techniques and the hoax approach to communicate the main matter of concern. In the video, an actress is pretending to be a marketer while she shares passionate insides of her profession the viewer assumes it's a similar format as the famous Tedtalks videos. The lecture starts light and funny, and there are two tipping points. The first one is when she presents cheerfully how marketing techniques are used to make the consumer feel better about the torturing animals, the atmosphere changes while the audience feels tricked. And the second one when she reveals her true intention, to hold up a mirror and make them realize they are part of this problem. The hoax approach of this project made me think of the similar strategy artist duo The Yes Men use in their work. As they annalize and present themselves using a certain language to be accepted by a target market, then creating a tipping point to reveal the hoax, we've lied to you, but for the greater good, to open your eyes.

See my notes on this page Analisis of Video: e-talks - The Secret of food marketing

Cognitive neuroscience of emotion

My goal is to make a chapter where I argue that it is naïve to trust your own observations because I think your brain is interpreting the information. I've been collecting some books on neuroscience, although I'm not sure if I'm on the right track of literature yet. Nevertheless, I would like to share this to research if this chapter is relevant in my thesis.

Scientist Elizabeth Phelps based in New York is researching the cognitive neuroscience of emotion. I've been watching several interviews trying to decide if it would be interesting to dig deeper. One of her case study's is the memory that people have on the 9/11 attacks, she focuses on the Flashbulb Memories. Three days after the attack they managed to set up surveys with people across her country. Then they did a follow-up survey a year after in 2002 and another one 2 years after this in 2004. A flashbulb memory was once thought to be seared into the brain permanently. But it turned out that the consistency of 9/11 memories was no different than that of mundane memories. In both cases, the number of consistent details about the event dropped while inconsistencies rose. Nonetheless, people felt very confident in their total recall of that moment. It is noteworthy that the people which were closer to the WTC on 9/11 had a stronger sense of reliving in their memory than people that were further during the attack.

Interview on research How our brains remember 9/11

BOOK: Wired for story

According to Lisa Cron, our brain is wired for story, there is nothing we can do about it. The brain's hardwired desire to learn what happens next seems a big influence on how we process information. A story that makes sense en contacts is more likely to be true. I'm still reading this at the moment, as a filmmaker this is failable information, but would it be interesting in my analyze this knowledge for my thesis?