Imagine if I sent you a report that included the following intimate and highly detailed information about you for the past month - or year.

• All of your personal and professional online activity – web & social media.
• Where, when and to whom you made a call, text or e-mail message.
• Where, when and from whom you received a call, text or e-mail message.
• Where you went and with whom, for how long, and how each of you went home. 
• The route(s) you took from home to and from work.
• Where you shopped, or stopped for a break along the way.
• When you walked, biked, used transit or personal transport, where you went.
• The amount of time it took you to get from point A to B and the calories you burned to get there.
• The amount of time you spent in your home last month broken down to minute.
• How many hours you spent at work, at home, sitting, standing, exercising, relaxing, sleeping (including REM and non-REM sleep).  

I then suggest you pay me a fee – lets say $40.00 per month – and I’ll optimize:

• your home’s lighting and temperature.
• when and how you should go to work.
• how to improve the quality and length of your sleep.
• how to improve your fitness (passively and actively).
• how to improve your online web and social presence + scores.    

Now I’ll remind you again – you have never met me. 

Well . . . that's exactly what Google™ will do in the very near future. 

Here’s the latest reason why I predict you’ll see reports like the above soon.   

Google has just announced that it’s buying wearable company Fitbit™. 

In a blog post announcing the news, Google SVP of devices and services Rick Osterloh said that the Fitbit purchase is “an opportunity to invest even more in Wear OS as well as introduce Made by Google wearable devices into the market.” Under the deal, Fitbit will be joining Google itself. It’s similar to the current situation with Nest, which is wholly under Google now, compared to when Alphabet had originally acquired the smart home company but left it as a separate division under the corporate structure.

According to a separate press release issued by Fitbit, the company will still take privacy for health and fitness data seriously, noting that “Fitbit health and wellness data will not be used for Google ads.” . . . for now.

Fitbit’s hardware chops have always been great, giving Google a much stronger foundation to build on for future Android-integrated wearables devices. On the flip side, Google’s software skills and wide developer support could help Fitbit’s smartwatches like the Versa get a little smarter, alongside the deeper software integration with Android that a closer relationship could offer. 

Jameson Lopp was the chief technology officer of the crypto startup casa. He is most notable for his decision to live off-the-grid, which has been written about in The New York Times by Nathaniel Popper and reprinted in the Toronto Star on April 27, 2019.

Apparently “You can disappear in 15 steps, but it won’t be easy”.

Mr. Lopp's strategy highlights are as follows:

1. create a new corporate identity,
2. set up new bank accounts and payment cards,
3. carry cash,
4. get a new phone number,
5. stop using your (cell) phone for directions,
6. move,
7. make up a fake name for casual interactions,
8. create a VPN for home internet use,
9. buy a boring car,
10. buy a decoy house,
11. set up a private mailbox and re-mailing service,
12. master the art of disguise,
13. work remotely,
14. encrypt devices when traveling remotely, and
15. hire a private investigator to “check your work”.  

Bye-bye now.

This is the back of a cookie bag from Subway IP Inc., telling me in 35 languages that my cookie may contain peanuts.

This page is from a typical IKEA furniture assembly brochure.

While there are five pages, also in 35 languages, warning of a possible tipping hazard, the other 30 pages get the assembly instructions across without any words at all.

IKEA is the conservation conscious global flat-pack furniture design + distribution leader. Had IKEA not made a serious, long-term commitment to illustration-driven-assembly-instructions over 50 years ago, they would probably be one of the world’s largest publishers + polluters today. 

I love to read. I also love looking for and discovering new authors whose work takes me down new planes of thinking.

I also love meeting and surrounding myself with people, places and things that are different. They nudge me out of my habitual thought-ruts and encourage me to entertain and embrace lots of different perspectives.

While I can see why this landing page from bookbub.com might be attractive to some, I see another flight feather being pulled from the wings of independent thought and free will. 

It tells “readers” that their editorial team will find great books for you at very low prices. A classic “appeal to the head and the heart” copy-writing tactic. 

It tells “readers” that “Book lovers have now become practically obsessed with this concept. In many cases, they’ve downloaded hundreds of books and saved hundreds of dollars. 

Translation:

• Booklovers, like others, are obsessed with “cheap”, not "good" goods.
• The more you buy the more you save.

Bing-book*-buying, reduces each book’s economic and intrinsic value. Each treasure becomes devalued to little more than cheap commodity status.

Over time this commoditization brings down the “value” of the entire book* category as well as the “book reading experience”.  

Sadly most of those books* will never be intensely read. Do the math. 

Of greatest concern is how this kind of social media content curating affects the choices groups and individuals make – including the value of free will and independent thought.   

*or anything else.

When I moved to Winnipeg about 10 years ago, a colleague asked me what kind of hours people are expected to work in Toronto. I told him that as a senior ad agency team manager I typically worked 50-60 hours a week, but that for him to catch up to and lap his peers, 60-70 hours would likely be required.

“Fuck That!” was his uncharacteristically brief response.

Since then I’ve discovered that his response is not uncommon for millennials in Winnipeg + elsewhere. Both then + now.

This picture of a Huawei employee napping at his desk at lunch-time should be a galvanizing example of why those with a false sense of entitlement (the right to live well on a 35 hr. wage) will always loose to those who, like this kid, are hungrier than you are.

Whether they're around the corner or around the globe.