Well, we're talking not just about "corporations", we are talking about entities with more gross earnings than most countries' GDP, e.g. Apple is sitting on billions of dollars in cash. These guys have the tech, the data, and oceans of money. Heck, some of them even have space forces :)
Maybe in our (very near?) cyber punk future, it's not only goverments that we should be concerned about. After all, we have some measure of input regarding the goverment.
>Maybe in our (very near?) cyber punk future, it's not only goverments that we should be concerned about. After all, we have some measure of input regarding the goverment.
Why shouldn't we already be concerned about the corporations? They've been slurping our data and selling it for a profit for my whole life[0].
Sure, that sort of behavior started with banks and other financial institutions, but has extended, over the decades, to consumer products companies (P&G, General Mills, etc.) and to retailers (Walmart, Target, etc.), then into internet search (Google, Bing), "social" media (the Meta conglomerate, etc.), hardware and software companies (Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc.), communication devices (Apple, Google, Samsung, etc.), consumer electronics (LG, Samsung, GE, Maytag), Automobiles (GM, Chrysler, Nissan, Toyota, etc., etc., etc.) and "IoT" devices (Amazon, Google and a host of others) are all hoovering up as much information as they can to both sell (and governments as well as other corporations are buying and paying through the nose) and use for "targeted" ads.
Isn't your refrigerator showing you ads, your TV recording what you're doing while you use it, your phone reporting pretty much everywhere you go, everything you do and everyone with whom you communicate, social media apps recording every key stroke, even if it doesn't end up in a post, your car tracking both your movements and your driving behavior, your internet searches used to create detailed shadow profiles of your interests and purchasing habits. I could go on and on and on. Corporations are collecting levels of private data on people that would have been beyond the Stasi's[1] wildest dreams.
And so I'll ask again, when, exactly, should we "start" to be concerned about corporate surveillance?
Oh, we most certainly should be, but I am just musing about the (not entirely improbable future and possibly inevitable) when corporations are more powerful and lethal than any government.
