Homo Digitalis Publicis

Did you know that in 2022, an averagre adult spent 7hours online each day?
If you are reading this on a screen during work, it means that it might be around 9-10 hours in your case.

That’s roughly 40% of your whole adult life.

Now multiply this with a mere 5.3billion internet users, and you know how much time humanity spends online…

Data is the oil of the age of technology and metadata* is something even more valuable in the coming age of AI.

*meta-data: Data about data that describes other data, providing information on patterns, on the level of individuals, communities or whole societies.

Why, you’d ask? Because every single internet user is being tracked and recorded at almost every digital interaction they have, exposing our personal and collective habits, preferences, beliefs. In many cases recording or querying our whole package of sensitive personal information, for example when you click: Log-in with Google.

This is how the internet works today, and it’s a practice hidden in plain sight.

There are movies like the “Social Dilemma” or “The Cambridge Analytica Story” and books written like El Doctorow’s: Little Brother or by Julian Assange’s Permanent Record about it.

Continuous, collective digital surveillance is so ever-present in today’s world that for the most part of it we don’t even recognise it.

Whevenever you interact with almost all internet based service, you are being redacted toa set of arbitrary and timeless data set, which is recorded usually with your full consent. How many times do you hit “Accept All Cookies” today?

This mass data exploitation atrocity is sold under the disguise of “improving digital user experience”. Communities and societies are being mined for their collective data patterns to be anaylised over and over again by self-improving algorythms, extending a

Reclaim your data to feel whole again

There are a number of ways to ensure your privacy and reclaim ownership of your personal data. And this is what Nym Shipyard is all about. It’s a six weeks massive open online course about privacy. Best of all - it’s better than free, because if you pay attention or do some extra tasks you can earn money while gaining invaluable knowledge and skills.

Do you have any questions?

I would hope so! Personally I had a ton of questions before my journey with Nym started during the last shipyard academy…

“Is this this really happening? What data is available about me? What are my digital rights? What can we do? Can You do anything? Is this app private? Are there any technical solutions, economical models or social innovations to solve this problem? Why do I need privacy if I have nothing to hide?”

And if you are a little bit like me: would like to change the world for the better, learn to do new and exciting things in a great community, while earning some money on the side, then the most important thing you could do today is to join the upcoming edition of Nym Shipyard, starting next Monday, on the 9th of October.

So buckle up and join Shipyard to

• Learn about how the internet works today and how it affects our lives.

• Listen to fantastic speakers on topics like Cypherpunk culture, mixnets, human rights, anti-surveillance economics, memetic warfare…

• Be part of a global and diverse community of hacktivists, educators, changemakers, coders, researchers and innovators from.

• Contribute to development of the worlds first decentralised mixnet.

• Develop your skills and knowledge about cybersecurity.

• Work on a project with real social impact and economic utility that uses blockchain for coordination.

• Have fun while fixing the internet together! 🍍

See you all there!
xoxo

Hux
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