On data’s ‘practical immortality’

We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age
by Wendy H. Wong

Cambridge: MIT Press, 2023
$35.95 / 9780262048576

Reviewed by Jessica Poon

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Recently, I asked a friend if I could take their picture and they immediately removed their Fitbit. “It’s embarrassing,” they said with charming sheepishness. Not exactly one to fetishize athleisure or cardio, my friend explained they use it as a heart monitor, rather than as a gym rat emblem. Either way, a Fitbit collects data and, much like your phone, probably knows you better than your mother. 

The aforementioned data isn’t kept in some airtight, inviolable vessel with intimidating bouncers to safeguard it. Somewhere, George Orwell is rolling his eyes at his last name becoming everyone’s favourite dystopian-sounding adjective.

When it comes to the internet, social media, and the glut of data accumulation, “there is no free lunch” comes to mind. We are the lunch. We are being surveilled, all the time—this is, I repeat, not news, but perhaps a matter of seemingly banal resignation and also why Edward Snowden is still in Russia. That everyone’s attention spans are truncated, pitifully mewling things, makes the challenge of widespread data literacy an admittedly lofty goal. But data literacy and human rights are very much related, even if there isn’t currently much overlap between the two. 

We, the Data by Kelowna professor Wendy H. Wong (The Authority Trap) is an accessible, elucidating book that makes a persuasive plea for us to connect data literacy and human rights. For fans of The Four-Dimensional Human by Laurence Scott, The Attention Merchant by Tim Wu, and Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, We, the Data is a welcome addition to this particular genre of nonfiction—an urgent call not only to pay attention to our habits, but also to effect change. Wong writes that “‘Data literacy’ isn’t yet the mantra we’re all chanting when we talk about emerging technologies, but it should be.”

Wong’s first line is an engaging question: “What do Amazon.com, basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal, and television reality show Shark Tank have in common?” On technology, Wong reminds us that “They are never neutral or magic.” She points out that, “Too often our thinking about all kinds of digital literacies has been focused on what individuals can do, not what collectives like communities, governments, and companies can do.”

Wong writes that the data “collectors care little about individuals deciding to drop their devices, but to each of us, it is costly to stop using devices and services we find invaluable.” To opt out in a cabin as a rich Luddite with a rotary phone and a typewriter is not a solution. A restaurant menu is often a scannable blob requiring connectivity. Passwords require additional identity confirmation on phones. On a cheerier note, Wong rightfully sings the praises of libraries. If data literacy becomes mainstream, libraries are essential.

Wong emphasizes that 

… data effectively last forever. It’s exceedingly difficult to ensure that our information does not go somewhere in the world we didn’t intend or think possible. Just think about how deleted Tweets seem to reappear in screen grabs, or some long-ago, trashed email resurfaces inconveniently. Even if they may not actually be forever, we may as well think of them as such because they are, for all intents and purposes, out of our control once they are created. 
These four characteristics—data’s co-createdness, mundanity, linkedness, and practical immortality—make data sticky. That stickiness changes how human autonomy, dignity, and equality are practiced.

For this reason, I was particularly amused by a YouTube comment saying this about Freddie Prinze Jr. in a clip from She’s All That: “I have not heard anything objectionable about this man in 25 years.” How many celebrities can you say that about?

Your data is, almost without fail, a frighteningly unflattering reflection of you. It is the number of times you highlight a paragraph in a PubMed study, how long you’ve had a pair of shoes in a shopping cart, or your predilection for checking if Blake Lively’s been cancelled yet—and this constellation of specific, often brain-numbingly banal data that makes you easily categorizable, is, to use Wong’s term, sticky. 

Wong writes: 

 … what about how you shake your mouse when you’re thinking? … Your credit card use patterns? Your commuting patterns? The point isn’t to get into debates about whether something is “personal” enough to be personal data or whether biometrics are more essential types of data than demographic data. Our knee-jerk sense of what personal data are is outdated. Data today encompass far more than what is on our identification cards or our passports. As early as 2016, researches were able to identify a person, along with key demographic information like age, gender, and ethnicity, with location data from as few as two apps…. People’s identifiability increases as more recorded behaviours are able to be triangulated.

If you leave behind loved ones, it’s technically possible to enact an AI version of you with all your verbal tics. Wong writes engrossingly about Robert Kardashian’s hologram rapturously telling Kim Kardashian in 2020 that she “…married the most, most, most, most, most genius man in the whole world, Kanye West.” To which I say, diplomatically: no comment.

Less onanistically, Wong also explains the origins of the Dadbot, created by James Vlahos in 2016. Anticipating the death of his dad and with his dad’s permission, Vlahos “collected 91,970 words” and “design[ed] hypothetical conversations about various topics, such as his dad’s childhood, meeting his wife, and his career. … Vlahos also wanted to capture the essence of his father, which would include unique contributions, such as insults like, “He flames from every orifice,” or sarcasm, like “Well, hot dribbling spit,” in response to self-promotion. The bot had to be able to respond to the user’s mood as well, not carrying on with humour if the user is sad or depressed.” Following Dadbot, Vlahos launched HereAfter AI to give others a chance to communicate with their loved ones after death. 

In a world with hot takes on hot takes on hot takes, Wong’s book is wide-ranging and often harrowing in its subjects, including, but not limited to the Fitbit, facial recognition technology, AI gaydar, two novels by Dave Eggers, and the coercion of Big Tech. Importantly, it is also a genuine pleasure to read. Data might share sticky properties with Spiderman’s web goo, “but they are also human. We are in the data.” In other words, we would do well to make data literacy mainstream.

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Originally from East Vancouver, Jessica Poon is a writer, former line cook, and pianist of dubious merit who recently returned to BC after completing a MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Guelph. [Editor’s note: Jessica Poon has recently reviewed books by Andromeda Romano-Lax, Sarah Leipciger, Katrina Kwan, Shelley Wood, Richard Kelly Kemick, Elisabeth Eaves, Rajinderpal S. Pal, Keziah Weir, Amber Cowie, Robyn Harding, Roz Nay, Anne Fleming, Miriam Lacroix, Taslim Burkowicz, Sam Wiebe, Amy Mattes, Louis Druehl, Sheung-King, Loghan Paylor, Lisa Moore (ed.), Sandra Kelly, and Robyn Harding for BCR]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-25: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an online book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, Maria Tippett, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster