Roger McNamee has been a Silicon Valley investor for 35 years and was one of the early investors in Facebook. He has just published his new book “Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe.”

In the video below he explains how Facebook's data-mining really works – our hunch is that you're not going to like it very much! Many digital platforms are primarily concerned with ‘disruption' at large scale, and don't want to be responsible for the consequences of their data exploitation.

We are all familiar with the phrase, “If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer: you’re the product being sold”  I believe that McNamee goes further: the users evolved from being the product that is sold to being the fuel for the data-mining factories. In that sense “Data is the New Oil” gets a new meaning: from mere lubrification of the new economy to its primary source of energy.

A must watch video.

Guest post by The Futures Agency content curator Petervan

Other Resources

Our recent podcast on Digital Obesity

Gerd's post on deleting Facebook

Gerd about Facebook, Privacy and Big Data in April 2012