According to the ancient Greek historian Pausanias, “Γνῶθι σεαυτόν” was one of three Delphic maxims inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Roughly translated, “Know thyself.”
This advice dates back to about 500 BC. It might be even older. So, some old, free advice.
Nowadays, we don’t need to knowourselves, because Big Tech is handling that for us, the same way they’re handling so many other things for us.
I came across the following list, last year, of the things Big Tech knows about me.
I was surprised. But not really.
There are things that Big Tech — especially Facebook — knows about me that even the Greeks didn’t know about themselves. Like, for instance, my IP address. Who knows their own IP address? But Facebook knows it. So does Google, Apple, Twitter, Amazon, Microsoft… the whole technological jungle knows my IP address.
They know my credit card number.
I don’t know my credit card number. I just insert it in the little slot at the self-checkout, and Big Tech takes care of putting me deeper in debt. How deep is the debt? I have no idea. But Big Tech knows.
They probably know what I’m going to write next, in this column, before I do.
The weird thing about all this, is that no actual person — at Facebook or Apple or Microsoft or Google — knows anything about me. Only their humongous computer networks are keeping track of my relationships and beliefs and important numbers. Sure, I suppose someone at Facebook could look me up, and find out my marital status and see a list of the ads I click. But why would they?
They don’t really want to know about me. The people who work at Facebook, I mean.
They just want their computers to know about me, so they can sell my information to other big companies with other big computer networks, staffed by people who have no actual interest in me, as a person.
Should I be concerned? If no actual person gives a damn about me, but thousands of computers know what videos I watched yesterday?
I have to assume that the computers don’t care about me either, except as an IP address to which they can deliver advertising content based on my shopping history.
Lately, my shopping history has been mostly brown rice in 25-pound sacks, and SmartWool socks. But for some reason, the computers that know everything about me are showing me lots of ads for sports cars.
Apparently, men who eat brown rice, also like sports cars? I can’t argue with that. However, it might have been the socks.
But it’s scary that the computers know more about me than I know about myself.
We don’t have a Temple of Apollo where I live… but if we did, it could be engraved with the following inscription:
“No need to know thyself. Our machines are keeping tabs.”