In his new book The Trust Manifesto, What you Need to do to Create a Better Internet, Damian Bradfield debunks the mystifying world of data and explores how we rebuild trust on the internet.
Illustrations by David Sanchez.
“Does my phone listen to my conversations?” is a very 2019 question, and one that ten, even five years ago, would not have been part of our lexicon. But today, type ‘does my phone listen to me’ into Google and get ready to scroll through over two billion results.
And why would your device - phone, laptop, whatever - be keen on eavesdropping on you anyway? Well, data, of course. The more they know about you, the better you can be targeted, and then, monetized. Earlier this year, The Economist published an article alleging that the world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data. The biggest, most powerful companies in the world are the tech titans and our technologies are advancing every single day. But as we sprint further and further into our fast-evolving future, perhaps we need to put the breaks on and consider what this actually means. What does the internet look like now? If we could, what would we change? Do we really trust it? And how can we make it better?
These are the questions that Damian Bradfield, WeTransfer’s CCO, poses in his new book The Trust Manifesto, What you Need to do to Create a Better Internet. With it, he aims to demystify the dangers of data misuse and explore the challenges that every internet user today faces. And if you’re still unsure where the online ends and the offline begins and why that matters anyway, well, the comic strip below says it all.
The Trust Manifesto is available to buy now.
All proceeds will be donated to the charity United For Global Mental Health.
