The Crowdsourcing Scam--From "Uber" to "Amazon"...Not sure what to think about this.

The Crowdsourcing Scam
Why do you deceive yourself?
Jacob Silverman

© Lisa Haney

In 1968 a Norwegian science fiction writer named Tor Åge Bringsværd published a peculiar short story called “Codemus.” The story has achieved the kind of retrospectively prophetic quality that makes sci-fi such a useful imaginative map for navigating our relationship with technology. (It also happens to be a good story, clever and light on its feet in its portrayal of a looming techno-fascism.) Bringsværd’s tale is about a thirty-eight-year-old man named Codemus who lives in a thoroughly automated society. “In the efficient society everything goes as planned,” goes one of the story’s mantras. “In the efficient society everything goes the way it should.”

“Codemus” is set sometime in the fifth decade of the twenty-first century, and its manically efficient society displays the kind of sterilized exactitude that we might associate with sci-fi’s New Wave period, when writers were less focused on space travel and ray guns than on questions of politics and personal freedom. A worldwide computer network, much like the Internet, provides information freely, although people have access only to end-user terminals (here Bringsværd seems to have envisioned a version of the cloud). Everyone has been equipped with a “little brother”—a digital assistant that we might recognize as a smartphone, right down to its sinister double-duty as a tracking device. Little brothers wake their owners up, tell them when to go to work, guide them on their commutes, and bring them home. They are at once companions, fonts of information, communication tools (everyone talks on them while walking in public), and draconian taskmasters hiding behind the scrim of technological sophistication and awesome computing power. To disobey one’s little brother is to violate a central directive of this efficient society.

Codemus always follows his little brother’s commands, but one day, the gadget decides to rebel. Little Brother (Codemus refers to his affectionately, affording him the dignity of capital letters) fails to wake up Codemus for work. Little Brother later decides to take Codemus, who is still under the spell of his machine, out to the park. Not much happens; they bask in the sun and try to start up a conversation with a park employee, who is immediately spooked. This mild encounter represents a grave offense on a day when park visits aren’t scheduled. Soon Codemus is a fugitive, pursued by police and bloodhounds through the city’s monorail system. Shadowed by the authorities at every stop, Little Brother demands that Codemus leave him behind. “They’ve got a fix on me, naturally,” Little Brother says, presaging an era when communication and surveillance would become synchronized processes. “I’m leaving a regular wake of radio waves behind us.”

Codemus doesn’t want to abandon his gadget-cum-companion, but eventually he acquiesces and dumps Little Brother. Soon fear, confusion, and emptiness take hold. Codemus has no idea who he is or what he’s supposed to do. “A human is a social entity,” goes another of the story’s aphoristic mantras, and Codemus is now alone. He is utterly, metaphysically lost. He decides to give himself up and falls into the arms of his pursuers. The story ends with Codemus “led back to the flock,” given a new little brother, and returned to the cool embrace of the efficient society. His purpose, such as it is, is restored.

Much More at..........

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