Stream of Consciousness

The problem with both Root and Attention Trust is that they collect, store and use your data in ways that are not always under your control, and you have no recourse other than to delete your data so they can’t use it anymore - assuming they actually delete it. It’s a fairly serious privacy issue, the upside being that you get to choose your Big Brother.

It would be far preferable to have direct control over your data, acquire and store it in open standard formats, and be able to either market it directly or contract with a third party to do such marketing for you. When doing so, you could use onion routing to provide them with your online contact info, so that you would be protected in case they started selling your data in ways against your contract (always a possibility) at which point you could simply sever the connection, leaving them with “headless data” - that is, data useful in aggregate but not connected to any definable person.

Since the data is owned by you to begin with, and transferred/stored in open formats, you would be able to easily contract with new service providers. It would, of course, be in their best interest to “play fair,” knowing that you are really in control. Only on a level playing field can there be a true “win-win.”

I work with CivicActions, and one of the best things about this gig is the lifestyle that it allows me to enjoy. CivicActions is a small but growing band of technology revolutionaries writing free and open source code for progressive organizations and political campaigns. We’re pulling in more work than we can handle, so I am pretty constantly overwhelmed (we could use good developers and project managers) but though I often don’t get enough sleep, I love what we’re doing and firmly believe that we’re headed down a good path.

We’re a 100% virtual company, which allows me to work from home any ten hours a day I want. This is great as I also get to spend time in close proximity to my family, especially important to me as my four-year-old son is growing and changing daily - I would hate to miss something special because I’m at “the office.” Even though my colleagues and I are physically separate, we connect every weekday morning on a 20-minute “scrum” call where we also get to share some “watercooler” talk about what’s up in our lives. Most importantly, everyone in the company is encouraged to put their lives - and lifestyle - first, though we’re generally workaholics and do whatever it takes to move the projects we’re working on forward.

I think a major reason for the dedication I see at Civic Actions is that we are doing Good Work - stuff that is making the world a better place (one vote at a time, one might say). This is particularly important for me, as I want my son to have clean air, drinkable water, quality health care, and a safe and peaceful world in which he is guaranteed the freedoms that this troubled country’s forefathers fought and died for. I don’t know how so many corporate workers can look at their kids in the face and believe that they are creating a better world for them, other than perhaps purely financially, while they are mortgaging the planet’s future. I am heartened by the fact that I am doing work that already makes my son very proud.

There’s no doubt that I could earn nearly twice what I make now in a corporate environment, but I wouldn’t have near the lifestyle and peace of mind I currently enjoy. And, with my continued work - and that of my dedicated compatriots - I may be able to pull in something akin to corporate dollars in the future so that I can create for my family those things we want and deserve, such as a house with a backyard (though probably not in the Bay Area!). In fact, all of us at CivicActions agree that acheiving such personal dreams are a key part of the measure of our group’s success.