111 Quotes by Christopher Wylie

We can already see how algorithms competing to maximize our attention have the capacity to not only transform cultures but redefine the experience of existence. Algorithmically reinforced “engagement” lies at the heart of our outrage politics, call-out culture, selfie-induced vanity, tech addiction, and eroding mental well-being. Targeted users are soaked in content to keep them clicking.

The underlying ideology within social media is not to enhance choice or agency, but rather to narrow, filter, and reduce choice to benefit creators and advertisers. Social media herds the citizenry into surveilled spaces where the architects can track and classify them and use this understanding to influence their behavior. If democracy and capitalism are based on accessible information and free choice, what we are witnessing is their subversion from the inside.

With the ascendancy of social media, we have been forced to place our trust in political campaigns to be honest, because if lies are told, we may never notice.

Jucikas went on to explain that sabering champagne is not about brute force; it's about studying the bottle and hitting the weakest spot with graceful precision. Done correctly, this requires very little pressure—you essentially let the bottle break itself. You hack the bottle's design flaw.

My brief exposure to hacking communities left a permanent impression. You learn that no system is absolutely –nothing is impenetrable and barriers are a dare. The hacker philosophy taught me that if you shift your perspective on any system: a computer, a network, even society, you may discover flaws and vulnerabilities.

A new logic of accumulation emerged in the boardrooms of silicon valley. Tech companies began making money from their ability to map out and organize information. At the core of this model was an asymmetry in knowledge: the machines knew a lot about our behaviour, but we knew very little about theirs.

Soon we were sharing personal information without the slightest hesitation. This was encouraged, in part, by a new vocabular. What were in effect privately owned surveillance networks became “communities,” the people these networks used for profit were “users,” and addictive design was promoted as “user experience” or “engagement.

Soon we were sharing personal information without the slightest hesitation. This was encouraged, in part, by a new vocabulary. What were in effect privately owned surveillance networks became “communities,” the people these networks used for profit were “users,” and addictive design was promoted as “user experience” or “engagement.

He reads about intersectional feminism or the fluidity of identity –not as I later learned that, because he’s open to those ideas –but because he wants to invert them: to identify what ideas people attach themselves to and then to weaponize it. What I didn’t know that day is that Bannon wanted to fight a cultural war, and so he had come to people who specialized in informational weapons to help him build his arsenal.