Yesterday I commented that no matter how stellar someone’s past performance it wasn’t a guarantee of future performance.

There are very few guarantees in life, but I do know of one thing you can count on.

And that is that the bosses of big tech lie.

They do it with flair, sincerity, a straight face and in writing.

Their devices listen to and share your words with outsiders — outside the company and the country.

Although no immediate action was taken against Apple or Amazon— which both have been found to also listen in on their users — the commissioner’s report “invited” the companies “swiftly review” their policies and procedures.

Apple says, “all reviewers are under the obligation to adhere to Apple’s strict confidentiality requirements,” but we all know that people blab.

The Terms of Service (TOS) go beyond straight lies by being opaque and obfuscated. Their rules and meaning are a constantly moving target that even the NYT can’t figure out

The Times reported 46 of the accounts to Instagram, the site responded within 24 hours that none violated its rules, without explaining why.

The accounts were scams using scraped images of innocent US military personnel to get money from innocent US citizens.

While fraud has proliferated on Facebook for years, those running the military romance scams are taking on not only one of the world’s most influential companies, but also the most powerful military — and succeeding.

Apparently fraud doesn’t violate the TOS.

But why should it, since violence, hate speech and bullying don’t.

It’s not as if your data is unidentifiable (there’s no such thing as “anonymized data”).

And “we care about your privacy” is the biggest lie of all.

Image credit: Mike Mozart

The above image was yesterday’s Oldie from 2009.

What’s changed (or was off in the first place) since then?

Let’s take them one-by-one.

Data: data, since “facts” are often historical and the historical info is often biased.

Information: Think bias and fake news, neither is new, but the quantity has exploded.

Knowledge: Same as original.

Understanding: Too often why or any questioning is asked only if the facts and information run counter to our beliefs, opinion, and worldview.

Wisdom: Unlikely.

Wikipedia describes wisdom as follows:

Wisdom, sapience, or sagacity is the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight.^[1] Wisdom is associated with attributes such as unbiased judgment, compassion, experiential self-knowledge, self-transcendence and non-attachment,^[2] and virtues such as ethics and benevolence.^[3][4]

Much of the ability to think according to the above description has been either voluntarily turned over to, or co-opted by, social media.

Considered actions often must pass an “Instagram/Twitter filter;” those that don’t aren’t acted upon.

If there is anything social media can not be blamed for it’s a proliferation of wisdom.

Join me tomorrow for a look at ways and means to acquire wisdom.

Image credit: Nick J Webb

It seems these days that people decorate their homes, choose their friends, food and clothes, determine their career path and employer, and organize their lives all in terms of what looks good on Instagram.

Doesn’t matter if the meal tastes good, as long as it photographs well. The same for everything else.

As long as a story can be spun and curated to impress people who aren’t known, and probably never will be, people will do/buy it.

And if an experience isn’t documented with pictures and posted online it might as well not have happened.

No kidding.

I actually overheard a guy say as much. Apparently his phone’s camera stopped working and he was grousing that the money spent on the trip was wasted.

What a strange world these people live in.

Is it your world?

I’m so glad it’s not mine.

Image credit: Aleks Grynis

“Change is the only constant” is an oft-quoted idea first uttered around 500 BC by Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher (those Greeks really knew what they were talking about).

The only difference between then and now is that change happens a whole lot faster.

In these days of fast change I try to keep two rules firmly in my conscious mind.

The first is something I heard many years ago, although don’t remember where.

The only thing free is the cheese in the mouse trap.

For whatever reason it really sank in and proved to be protection, preventing me from falling for the lure of free as social media, Google and other services rose to overwhelming prominence.

It kept me from being parsed, productized, and sold.

The second isn’t new and has been said many ways over the decades. This is how I’ve thought about it for decades.

Personality reaps more acclaim than talent or accomplishments.

I find it especially true in these days of personal branding and self promotion.

I’m grateful I absorbed both ideas; they’ve made my life much simpler, safer and easier these days.

And I’m not missing a thing.

Image credit: Cambodia4kids.org Beth Kanter

There was a time that having influence meant something.

Maybe it still does in certain circles, but for much of the world it means you have millions, or at least hundreds of thousands, of followers on Instagram, YouTube and Twitter (Facebook seems to be passé).

They are called ‘influencers’ and their followers treat their words, actions, recommendations, and opinions as gospel.

In spite of the fact that many of them are paid to promote [whatever].

Of course, famous people have been paid to endorse products for decades.

The difference is that many influencers are famous only because they are expert manipulators of social media — or they pay experts to build their brand.

So. Not new and relatively harmless.

But not when they are built on a lie and involve your health or money.

[Yovana Mendoza] The 28-year-old influencer, also known as Rawvana, has amassed more than 3 million followers across YouTube and Instagram by extolling the life-changing properties of a raw vegan diet. (…)  a couple of weeks ago, Mendoza was recorded eating seafood (…) Realising she was being filmed, she tried to hide the fish, but the jig was up.

Mendoza admitted she had stopped eating vegan for health reasons.

But she kept preaching the lifestyle.

There are dozens of similar stories and hundreds of influencers whose only true skill is self-promotion.

They talk about health; about money; about “living your best life.”

They talk to the millions of fools who follow them.

Image credit: Marco Raaphorst

In yesterday’s Golden Oldie I referred to the importance of noticing and touching “just one life,” as opposed to fixing the world.

It’s been just shy of a decade since I wrote it, so it’s worth asking.

How many lives have you touched? How many times have you, as Anne Herbert says, practiced random acts of kindness of senseless acts of beauty?

Let alone done it anonymously — no Twitter bragging, Instagram image or Facebook post?

For that matter, when did you last look up from your phone long enough to notice the opportunity to do either?

Image credit: Lion Multimedia Production U.S.A.

Scott Goodson has worked at Apple, Instagram and Facebook; all hot companies known for their creativity, innovation and cultures.

Goodson recently joined Pinterest and found an enormous difference.

“I found Pinterest to be a very different sort of culture than I’m used to. One of the most unique things is that the company really values interdisciplinary work across the different functional areas of the team. The notion of empathy is deeply understood here. At other companies there’s a bit more of a competitive or even ruthless perspective, so it was really refreshing to see the level of cooperation here.”

He goes on to say,

“There’s definitely a stereotype of a successful startup that it’s often this aggressive, type A place and that’s just not necessarily true. You can have geniuses that are nice or geniuses that are really egotistical. But they’re both geniuses. So, we really want to work with the geniuses that are nice to each other and have a common level of respect.”

What neither Goodson nor the article mention is that Pinterest has a strong team of female designers and engineers.

While the founders are male, the culture they developed is one where women thrive.

“It was a revelation to join the team at Pinterest and feel like I was treated like an engineer first, not as a female engineer. In most other places, I felt like people always treated me as a “female engineer,” like I was a novelty. People even called me a unicorn to my face. It was really nice to come here and not have that gender modifier in front of who I am.” –Tracy Chou, Pinterest engineer

Pinterest’s culture fosters creative collaboration and mutual respect because it is the absolute opposite of the typical frat-boy startup culture so common in the Valley.

Flickr image credit: katdaned

 Would you be surprised to know that interruptions cost business $650 billion dollars a year.

“A typical information worker who sits at a computer all day turns to his e-mail program more than 50 times and uses instant messaging 77 times… data from 40,000 people who have tracking software on their computers, found that on average the worker also stops at 40 Web sites over the course of the day…”

Would you be more surprised to know that was in 2008?

650 billion dollars in lost productivity.

And that was before smartphones, texting, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, Angry Birds, Candy Crush, etc., etc. (These days bosses are worse.)

Can you imagine the cost in 2014?

Flickr image credit: underminingme

It’s well-known to my readers that I’m no lover of social media; that I think it’s a giant time-waster; a black hole for energy more rewardingly spent in the real-world and with the serious potential to ruin a person’s career and even life.

But, as I am constantly told, a digital dinosaur such as me has no real ability to evaluate, let alone judge, the value of social media to others.

For all of you who feel that way, and for all your friends who don’t know me from Adam, I have proof from someone whose credentials can’t be impugned.

I’m referring to Ryan Block, former editor in chief of AOL’s Engadget and the co-founder of tech community gdgt.com.

In a guest post he explains why he quit Instagram and muses on the value and role social media should play in a person’s life.

We’d all be much better off simplifying our technological footprints and consolidating our trust in the few services that provide us the greatest value with the fewest unintended side effects. In the end, I’m not afraid to admit it. I’m a quitter.

And you should be, too. People wondering what there is to gain by thinning their online accounts sometimes ask: “Why quit?” Instead, I think every once in a while we should all ask ourselves: “Why stay?”

So before you tweet his post or add it to your Facebook page, why not take a few minutes and give some thought to your own actions in light of Ryan’s comments.

Flickr image credit: kris krüg