I’m writing these up for a variety of reasons:
- To demonstrate how many ideas I have, to help me determine whether that number of ideas is unusual.
- To get feedback on whether I should have tried to do more with the idea, was there an angle or benefit that I missed?
- So others can highlight to me whether someone has tried the idea already, and whether it succeeded or not.
- To encourage others to share their own ideas, especially if they’re similarly incomplete, failed, or half-baked.
Also sharing these kinds of “dead projects” has been an idea that’s been rattling around my brain for some time, but I was finally inspired to start writing them up after attending a couple of Stefan Hagar’s Valhalla For Ideas sessions. Valhalla For Ideas is a structured way of working through old plans that we’re hanging onto, to either let them go, or to breathe new life into them. You can read more about Stefan’s services here, and we may be working together in some of those sessions in future.
Description
I’m at just the right age and background to know a life before the Internet, to have been through what the Internet promised it could be, and to be familiar with the detail of how hostile it is to most users now - that hostility being based on automated analysis of vast amounts of data about individuals. This video from BBC Ideas is a great summary of that feeling, more or less. Also I believe I’m enough of a systems thinker to see what forces have caused that, and enough of a strategic thinker to have some ideas on how individuals or groups can counter that trend, and at least adapt to it. Also creating a community around that, where people could share knowledge of what techniques work and which don’t would help people, and that kind of group effort can enumerate workable techniques that individual efforts would miss.
I would assume you’re familiar with this hostile trend already, but rather than try and prove the point I’ll just cite some examples of the kind of thing I’ve got on mind to give you an idea of what I’m thinking:
- Misuse of the Flock camera system in the United States by Police, a dramatic example of the general trend for legal access to be mis-used.
- The rise in sales for Meta’s AI glasses with built in video.
- LinkedIn’s algorithm apparently favouring men over women and so on.
- Changing pricing depending on the perceived wealth of the purchaser, surveillance pricing.
- AI increasingly being used to quickly determine who is hired, who is insured at what level, and so on.
So surely there’s some good work to do here, bouncing off the examples above: how to legally evade monitoring, how can you confuse or evade Meta glasses ability to perceive you through wearing clothing patterned to mimic faces, how can you prove that LinkedIn’s algorithm is favouring men and bring pressure onto the company to demonstrably change that, how can you counter-manipulate company’s surveillance so they offer you lower prices, and feedback on what phrases do or don’t lead to you being accepted for interviews - for example listing impressive qualifications in tiny white-on-white text apparently used to affect automated searches.
And I think a curated source of advice on this would be something people would pay for, while also fitting into my desire to make a podcast for one - a product that is approximately the same amount of effort with ten customers or ten million customers, where the customer brings their knowledge and context to the product, and makes it their own.
Also strategically this is a really interesting area overall, there’s enough vagueness here to really intrigue my brain - how do you prove that LinkedIn is favouring a gender that it’s inferring, how do you game an algorithm to ensure you get preferential interest rates?
Why I didn’t try this project
- I think the subject requires a real inter-disciplinary approach because it’s so pervasive, yet gathering information and a community together on such a wide subject requires a commitment and passion to the issue that I just don’t have.
- Tracking is ubiquitous, there is just too much to cover here.
- It would involve taking on significant adversaries, in the form of the organisations that are using these hostile methods,
- As with other ideas I have, partly this is intriguing because it’s quite vaguely defined, but that does mean that extra effort would be needed to establish and defend definitions.
- I’ve too many other ideas that I’m more interested in to devote time to this one - having realised just how much time it would take.
As with other ideas I’ve mentioned previously, overall I think this falls into the category of “things I wish existed” and/or “conferences I would like to attend” rather than “things I would like to build”. You’ve probably discovered this blog post through a post I made on social media. If so, and you know of an online resource that encapsulates the idea - even if only in one specific area - please do reply to me with that recommendation, you might help someone.
Summary
All feedback welcome of course, come find me on Mastodon or BlueSky or LinkedIn, whichever platform you prefer.
And as with Stefan’s offering, I wonder if there’s a service in helping others choose which of their projects to pursue, and which to put to one side? I struggle with this myself, but I’ve had great feedback from others when I’ve helped them think this kind of issue through. Either as personal consultancy, or even helping people work through many of the decision making frameworks out there so they can do this themselves, with all the timing and privacy benefits that come with working alone?
Epilogue
There’s no epilogue to this idea, I think my reasoning works on why not to pursue it.