Slouching Toward ‘Accept All Cookies’
We are all shedding data like skin cells. Almost everything we do with, or simply in proximity to, a connected device generates some small bit of information—about who we are, about the device we’re using and the other devices nearby, about what we did and when and how and for how long. Sometimes doing nothing at all—merely lingering on a webpage—is recorded as a relevant piece of information. Sometimes simply walking past a Wi-Fi router is a data point to be captured and processed. Sometimes the connected device isn’t a phone or a computer, as such; sometimes it’s a traffic light or a toaster or a toilet. If it is our phone, and we have location services enabled—which many people do, so that they can get delivery and Find My Friends and benefit from the convenience of turn-by-turn directions—our precise location data are being constantly collected and transmitted. We pick up our devices and command them to open the world for us, which they do quite well. But they also produce a secondary output too—all those tiny flecks of dead skin floating around us.
Our data are everywhere because our data are useful. Mostly to make people money: When someone opens up their phone’s browser and clicks on a link—to use the most basic example—a whole hidden economy whirs into
