I finally completed The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff. To say that she has put into words what have been vague ideas that was floating in my head is a severe understatement---she named things and gave definitions on what she means.
And as I have mentioned before in the recent past (not going to self-cite---too lazy/tired), anything that can be named/labelled can be discriminated against, with discrimination being a technical term meaning a classification of whether something is the in-group or the out-group. In this case, naming the behaviours as ``surveillance capitalism'', the type of dysfunctional society we are living in as being under an ``instrumentarian one'', and explicitly pointing out just how the surveillance capitalists managed to get away with things has created a mental framework from which one can think further.
But enough of that---I think I do the book an injustice with my lousy summary here. It's probably much better to read the book for oneself---it is quite readable, especially for those who have lived through the ``before'' and ``after'' of things.
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In other news, I had gone and have impressions of my ear canals made, and have placed an order for the −25 dB non-distorting filter for my musician's ear plugs. I'll probably write more about the whole process once I have the ear plugs themselves, so for now, just let this little note act as a stand in.
I managed to indulge in some Five Guys food again after the consultation with the audiologist. The burger's still nice, but as usual, grease was just spilling everywhere due to the order itself. I got myself a small cajun fries, and it was definitely not as crazy as the normal amount of fries that one would expect from a Five Guys. I spent some time after that just walking through Plaza Singapura and paid a visit to the Yamaha shop. The baritone saxophone that had been sitting there for so long was no longer present---in its place was a bass clarinet instead. I did think of getting a pianica (the three-octave range one), but thought better of it. I managed to see the new Alto-Venova up close, but felt that for that dimension, I can just play on my soprano saxophone. The YPC-82 piccolo looked really tempting with its price point of about SGD3k, but as I said, no budget.
Maybe I'll get it later when I do have the budget. Maybe.
Anyway, that's all for now. Till the next update.
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