Corporations [gained] direct access to what we may think of as our humanity, emotions, and agency but, in this context, are really just buttons.

You know something is wrong when the government declares opening someone else’s mail is a felony but your internet activity is fair game for data collecting.

To find signals in data, we must learn to reduce the noise - not just the noise that resides in the data, but also the noise that resides in us. It is nearly impossible for noisy minds to perceive anything but noise in data.

1973 Fair Information Practices:- You should know who has your personal data, what data they have, and how it is used.- You should be able to prevent information collected about you for one purpose from being used for others.- You should be able to correct inaccurate information about you.- Your data should be secure...while it's illegal to use Brad Pitt's image to sell a watch without his permission, Facebook is free to use your name to sell one to your friends.

Signals always point to something. In this sense, a signal is not a thing but a relationship. Data becomes useful knowledge of something that matters when it builds a bridge between a question and an answer. This connection is the signal.

Everything that informs us of something useful that we didn't already know is a potential signal. If it matters and deserves a response, its potential is actualized.