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Shoshanna Zuboff’s in Sunday’s NYT

I have lots to say about Shoshanna Zuboff’s piece in this week’s New York Times, but it’s late and I thought I’d give you a chance to look it over before I say anything about it. Enjoy. It’s a great primer to her weighty The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (and a lot more accessible).

If you need a laugh, even if your sense of humor tends toward the acid I don’t recommend reading this thing I stumbled on last week, Microsoft’s book-length ad for buying AI from them. Though it’s an interesting companion piece to contrast Zuboff.

It’s a real barrel of laughs. No kidding, I bought it just because it will be funny in just a few years that a paperback was published. I’m laughing all the way to Satya and Jeff not even needing a device to track me down because in fact I bought a physical book from an online retailer, which was tracked from first click to a picture of it being taken and sent to me to prove it was delivered.

By Marx Marvelous

“When I decided to take an alias, I wanted more than to apply a crust to the worn surface of my real identity. I wanted to make a statement, to express something through the unexploited medium of nom de plume. Being in a defiant frame of mind, I asked myself what it is that my fellows at the Institute—that, indeed, the average American males of my age and economic stratum—hate most. What do they most loathe? The answer I arrived at was Communism and homosexuality. Communists and homosexuals are the targets of the majority of the normal male's fear-honed barbs. Thus you can see how I in my rebellion selected the given name of 'Marx.' The surname was more difficult. Obviously, I couldn't call myself Marx Homosexual or Marx Queer or even Marx Fag. But I remembered having read in a syndicated newspaper column that the one word no red-blooded he-man would ever ever utter was 'marvelous.' 'Marvelous' is an expression reserved for interior decorators and choreographers and is as taboo in the bleachers, the sales meeting or the pool hall as a rose behind the ear or a velvet snood. “So, I embraced that maligned term as if it were a victimized ancestor. And here I am: Marx Marvelous.”