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Shoshana Zuboff | An excerpt adapted from The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power | PublicAffairs | 2019 | 23 minutes (6,281 words)

In 2000 a group of computer scientists and engineers at Georgia Tech collaborated on a project called the “Aware Home.” It was meant to be a “living laboratory” for the study of “ubiquitous computing.” They imagined a “human-home symbiosis” in which many animate and inanimate processes would be captured by an elaborate network of “context aware sensors” embedded in the house and by wearable computers worn by the home’s occupants. The design called for an “automated wireless collaboration” between the platform that hosted personal information from the occupants’ wearables and a second one that hosted the environmental information from the sensors.

There were three working assumptions: first, the scientists and engineers understood that the new data systems would produce an entirely new knowledge domain. Second, it was assumed that the rights to that new knowledge and the power to use it to improve one’s life would belong exclusively to the people who live in the house. Third, the team assumed that for all of its digital wizardry, the Aware Home would take its place as a modern incarnation of the ancient conventions that understand “home” as the private sanctuary of those who dwell within its walls.

All of this was expressed in the engineering plan. It emphasized trust, simplicity, the sovereignty of the individual, and the inviolability of the home as a private domain. The Aware Home information system was imagined as a simple “closed loop” with only two nodes and controlled entirely by the home’s occupants. Because the house would be “constantly monitoring the occupants’ whereabouts and activities…even tracing its inhabitants’ medical conditions,” the team concluded, “there is a clear need to give the occupants knowledge and control of the distribution of this information.” All the information was to be stored on the occupants’ wearable computers “to insure the privacy of an individual’s information.”

By 2018, the global “smart-home” market was valued at $36 billion and expected to reach $151 billion by 2023. The numbers betray an earthquake beneath their surface. Consider just one smart-home device: the Nest thermostat, which was made by a company that was owned by Alphabet, the Google holding company, and then merged with Google in 2018. The Nest thermostat does many things imagined in the Aware Home. It collects data about its uses and environment. It uses motion sensors and computation to “learn” the behaviors of a home’s inhabitants. Nest’s apps can gather data from other connected products such as cars, ovens, fitness trackers, and beds. Such systems can, for example, trigger lights if an anomalous motion is detected, signal video and audio recording, and even send notifications to homeowners or others. As a result of the merger with Google, the thermostat, like other Nest products, will be built with Google’s artificial intelligence capabilities, including its personal digital “assistant.” Like the Aware Home, the thermostat and its brethren devices create immense new stores of knowledge and therefore new power — but for whom?

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Wi-Fi–enabled and networked, the thermostat’s intricate, personalized data stores are uploaded to Google’s servers. Each thermostat comes with a “privacy policy,” a “terms-of-service agreement,” and an “end-user licensing agreement.” These reveal oppressive privacy and security consequences in which sensitive household and personal information are shared with other smart devices, unnamed personnel, and third parties for the purposes of predictive analyses and sales to other unspecified parties. Nest takes little responsibility for the security of the information it collects and none for how the other companies in its ecosystem will put those data to use. A detailed analysis of Nest’s policies by two University of London scholars concluded that were one to enter into the Nest ecosystem of connected devices and apps, each with their own equally burdensome and audacious terms, the purchase of a single home thermostat would entail the need to review nearly a thousand so-called contracts.

Should the customer refuse to agree to Nest’s stipulations, the terms of service indicate that the functionality and security of the thermostat will be deeply compromised, no longer supported by the necessary updates meant to ensure its reliability and safety. The consequences can range from frozen pipes to failed smoke alarms to an easily hacked internal home system.

By 2018, the assumptions of the Aware Home were gone with the wind. Where did they go? What was that wind? The Aware Home, like many other visionary projects, imagined a digital future that empowers individuals to lead more-effective lives. What is most critical is that in the year 2000 this vision naturally assumed an unwavering commitment to the privacy of individual experience. Should an individual choose to render her experience digitally, then she would exercise exclusive rights to the knowledge garnered from such data, as well as exclusive rights to decide how such knowledge might be put to use. Today these rights to privacy, knowledge, and application have been usurped by a bold market venture powered by unilateral claims to others’ experience and the knowledge that flows from it. What does this sea change mean for us, for our children, for our democracies, and for the very possibility of a human future in a digital world? It is the darkening of the digital dream into a voracious and utterly novel commercial project that I call surveillance capitalism.

Surveillance capitalism runs contrary to the early digital dream, consigning the Aware Home to ancient history. Instead, it strips away the illusion that the networked form has some kind of indigenous moral content, that being “connected” is somehow intrinsically pro-social, innately inclusive, or naturally tending toward the democratization of knowledge. Digital connection is now a means to others’ commercial ends. At its core, surveillance capitalism is parasitic and self-referential. It revives Karl Marx’s old image of capitalism as a vampire that feeds on labor, but with an unexpected turn. Instead of labor, surveillance capitalism feeds on every aspect of every human’s experience. Google invented and perfected surveillance capitalism in much the same way that a century ago General Motors invented and perfected managerial capitalism. Google was the pioneer of surveillance capitalism in thought and practice, the deep pocket for research and development, and the trailblazer in experimentation and implementation, but it is no longer the only actor on this path. Surveillance capitalism quickly spread to Facebook and later to Microsoft. Evidence suggests that Amazon has veered in this direction, and it is a constant challenge to Apple, both as an external threat and as a source of internal debate and conflict.

As the pioneer of surveillance capitalism, Google launched an unprecedented market operation into the unmapped spaces of the internet, where it faced few impediments from law or competitors, like an invasive species in a landscape free of natural predators. Its leaders drove the systemic coherence of their businesses at a breakneck pace that neither public institutions nor individuals could follow. Google also benefited from historical events when a national security apparatus galvanized by the attacks of 9/11 was inclined to nurture, mimic, shelter, and appropriate surveillance capitalism’s emergent capabilities for the sake of total knowledge and its promise of certainty.

Our personal experiences are scraped and packaged as the means to others’ ends…We are the sources of surveillance capitalism’s crucial surplus.

Surveillance capitalists quickly realized that they could do anything they wanted, and they did. They dressed in the fashions of advocacy and emancipation, appealing to and exploiting contemporary anxieties, while the real action was hidden offstage. Theirs was an invisibility cloak woven in equal measure to the rhetoric of the empowering web, the ability to move swiftly, the confidence of vast revenue streams, and the wild, undefended nature of the territory they would conquer and claim. They were protected by the inherent illegibility of the automated processes that they rule, the ignorance that these processes breed, and the sense of inevitability that they foster.

Surveillance capitalism is no longer confined to the competitive dramas of the large internet companies, where behavioral futures markets were first aimed at online advertising. Its mechanisms and economic imperatives have become the default model for most internet-based businesses. Eventually, competitive pressure drove expansion into the offline world, where the same foundational mechanisms that expropriate your online browsing, likes, and clicks are trained on your run in the park, breakfast conversation, or hunt for a parking space. Today’s prediction products are traded in behavioral futures markets that extend beyond targeted online ads to many other sectors, including insurance, retail, finance, and an ever-widening range of goods and services companies determined to participate in these new and profitable markets. Whether it’s a “smart” home device, what the insurance companies call “behavioral underwriting,” or any one of thousands of other transactions, we now pay for our own domination.

Surveillance capitalism’s products and services are not the objects of a value exchange. They do not establish constructive producer-consumer reciprocities. Instead, they are the “hooks” that lure users into their extractive operations in which our personal experiences are scraped and packaged as the means to others’ ends. We are not surveillance capitalism’s “customers.” Although the saying tells us “If it’s free, then you are the product,” that is also incorrect. We are the sources of surveillance capitalism’s crucial surplus: the objects of a technologically advanced and increasingly inescapable raw-material-extraction operation. Surveillance capitalism’s actual customers are the enterprises that trade in its markets for future behavior.

Google is to surveillance capitalism what the Ford Motor Company and General Motors were to mass-production–based managerial capitalism. New economic logics and their commercial models are discovered by people in a time and place and then perfected through trial and error. In our time Google became the pioneer, discoverer, elaborator, experimenter, lead practitioner, role model, and diffusion hub of surveillance capitalism. GM and Ford’s iconic status as pioneers of twentieth-century capitalism made them enduring objects of scholarly research and public fascination because the lessons they had to teach resonated far beyond the individual companies. Google’s practices deserve the same kind of examination, not merely as a critique of a single company but rather as the starting point for the codification of a powerful new form of capitalism.

With the triumph of mass production at Ford and for decades thereafter, hundreds of researchers, businesspeople, engineers, journalists, and scholars would excavate the circumstances of its invention, origins, and consequences. Decades later, scholars continued to write extensively about Ford, the man and the company. GM has also been an object of intense scrutiny. It was the site of Peter Drucker’s field studies for his seminal Concept of the Corporation, the 1946 book that codified the practices of the twentieth-century business organization and established Drucker’s reputation as a management sage. In addition to the many works of scholarship and analysis on these two firms, their own leaders enthusiastically articulated their discoveries and practices. Henry Ford and his general manager, James Couzens, and Alfred Sloan and his marketing man, Henry “Buck” Weaver, reflected on, conceptualized, and proselytized their achievements, specifically locating them in the evolutionary drama of American capitalism.

Google is a notoriously secretive company, and one is hard-pressed to imagine a Drucker equivalent freely roaming the scene and scribbling in the hallways. Its executives carefully craft their messages of digital evangelism in books and blog posts, but its operations are not easily accessible to outside researchers or journalists. In 2016 a lawsuit brought against the company by a product manager alleged an internal spying program in which employees are expected to identify coworkers who violate the firm’s confidentiality agreement: a broad prohibition against divulging anything about the company to anyone. The closest thing we have to a Buck Weaver or James Couzens codifying Google’s practices and objectives is the company’s longtime chief economist, Hal Varian, who aids the cause of understanding with scholarly articles that explore important themes. Varian has been described as “the Adam Smith of the discipline of Googlenomics” and the “godfather” of its advertising model. It is in Varian’s work that we find hidden-in-plain-sight important clues to the logic of surveillance capitalism and its claims to power.

In two extraordinary articles in scholarly journals, Varian explored the theme of “computer-mediated transactions” and their transformational effects on the modern economy. Both pieces are written in amiable, down-to-earth prose, but Varian’s casual understatement stands in counterpoint to his often-startling declarations: “Nowadays there is a computer in the middle of virtually every transaction…now that they are available these computers have several other uses.” He then identifies four such new uses: “data extraction and analysis,” “new contractual forms due to better monitoring,” “personalization and customization,” and “continuous experiments.”

Varian’s discussions of these new “uses” are an unexpected guide to the strange logic of surveillance capitalism, the division of learning that it shapes, and the character of the information civilization toward which it leads. “Data extraction and analysis,” Varian writes, “is what everyone is talking about when they talk about big data.”

Google was incorporated in 1998, founded by Stanford graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin just two years after the Mosaic browser threw open the doors of the world wide web to the computer-using public. From the start, the company embodied the promise of information capitalism as a liberating and democratic social force that galvanized and delighted second-modernity populations around the world.

Thanks to this wide embrace, Google successfully imposed computer mediation on broad new domains of human behavior as people searched online and engaged with the web through a growing roster of Google services. As these new activities were informated for the first time, they produced wholly new data resources. For example, in addition to key words, each Google search query produces a wake of collateral data such as the number and pattern of search terms, how a query is phrased, spelling, punctuation, dwell times, click patterns, and location.

There was no reliable way to turn investors’ money into revenue…The behavioral value reinvestment cycle produced a very cool search function, but it was not yet capitalism.

Early on, these behavioral by-products were haphazardly stored and operationally ignored. Amit Patel, a young Stanford graduate student with a special interest in “data mining,” is frequently credited with the groundbreaking insight into the significance of Google’s accidental data caches. His work with these data logs persuaded him that detailed stories about each user — thoughts, feelings, interests — could be constructed from the wake of unstructured signals that trailed every online action. These data, he concluded, actually provided a “broad sensor of human behavior” and could be put to immediate use in realizing cofounder Larry Page’s dream of Search as a comprehensive artificial intelligence.

Google’s engineers soon grasped that the continuous flows of collateral behavioral data could turn the search engine into a recursive learning system that constantly improved search results and spurred product innovations such as spell check, translation, and voice recognition. As Kenneth Cukier observed at that time,

Other search engines in the 1990s had the chance to do the same, but did not pursue it. Around 2000 Yahoo! saw the potential, but nothing came of the idea. It was Google that recognized the gold dust in the detritus of its interactions with its users and took the trouble to collect it up…Google exploits information that is a by-product of user interactions, or data exhaust, which is automatically recycled to improve the service or create an entirely new product.

What had been regarded as waste material — “data exhaust” spewed into Google’s servers during the combustive action of Search — was quickly reimagined as a critical element in the transformation of Google’s search engine into a reflexive process of continuous learning and improvement.

At that early stage of Google’s development, the feedback loops involved in improving its Search functions produced a balance of power: Search needed people to learn from, and people needed Search to learn from. This symbiosis enabled Google’s algorithms to learn and produce ever-more relevant and comprehensive search results. More queries meant more learning; more learning produced more relevance. More relevance meant more searches and more users. By the time the young company held its first press conference in 1999, to announce a $25 million equity investment from two of the most revered Silicon Valley venture capital firms, Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins, Google Search was already fielding seven million requests each day. A few years later, Hal Varian, who joined Google as its chief economist in 2002, would note, “Every action a user performs is considered a signal to be analyzed and fed back into the system.” The Page Rank algorithm, named after its founder, had already given Google a significant advantage in identifying the most popular results for queries. Over the course of the next few years it would be the capture, storage, analysis, and learning from the by-products of those search queries that would turn Google into the gold standard of web search.

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The key point for us rests on a critical distinction. During this early period, behavioral data were put to work entirely on the user’s behalf. User data provided value at no cost, and that value was reinvested in the user experience in the form of improved services: enhancements that were also offered at no cost to users. Users provided the raw material in the form of behavioral data, and those data were harvested to improve speed, accuracy, and relevance and to help build ancillary products such as translation. I call this the behavioral value reinvestment cycle, in which all behavioral data are reinvested in the improvement of the product or service.

The cycle emulates the logic of the iPod; it worked beautifully at Google but with one critical difference: the absence of a sustainable market transaction. In the case of the iPod, the cycle was triggered by the purchase of a high-margin physical product. Subsequent reciprocities improved the iPod product and led to increased sales. Customers were the subjects of the commercial process, which promised alignment with their “what I want, when I want, where I want” demands. At Google, the cycle was similarly oriented toward the individual as its subject, but without a physical product to sell, it floated outside the marketplace, an interaction with “users” rather than a market transaction with customers.

This helps to explain why it is inaccurate to think of Google’s users as its customers: there is no economic exchange, no price, and no profit. Nor do users function in the role of workers. When a capitalist hires workers and provides them with wages and means of production, the products that they produce belong to the capitalist to sell at a profit. Not so here. Users are not paid for their labor, nor do they operate the means of production. Finally, people often say that the user is the “product.” This is also misleading. Users are not products, but rather we are the sources of raw-material supply. Surveillance capitalism’s unusual products manage to be derived from our behavior while remaining indifferent to our behavior. Its products are about predicting us, without actually caring what we do or what is done to us.

At this early stage of Google’s development, whatever Search users inadvertently gave up that was of value to the company they also used up in the form of improved services. In this reinvestment cycle, serving users with amazing Search results “consumed” all the value that users created when they provided extra behavioral data. The fact that users needed Search about as much as Search needed users created a balance of power between Google and its populations. People were treated as ends in themselves, the subjects of a nonmarket, self-contained cycle that was perfectly aligned with Google’s stated mission “to organize the world’s information, making it universally accessible and useful.”

By 1999, despite the splendor of Google’s new world of searchable web pages, its growing computer science capabilities, and its glamorous venture backers, there was no reliable way to turn investors’ money into revenue. The behavioral value reinvestment cycle produced a very cool search function, but it was not yet capitalism. The balance of power made it financially risky and possibly counterproductive to charge users a fee for search services. Selling search results would also have set a dangerous precedent for the firm, assigning a price to indexed information that Google’s web crawler had already taken from others without payment. Without a device like Apple’s iPod or its digital songs, there were no margins, no surplus, nothing left over to sell and turn into revenue.

Google had relegated advertising to steerage class: its AdWords team consisted of seven people, most of whom shared the founders’ general antipathy toward ads. The tone had been set in Sergey Brin and Larry Page’s milestone paper that unveiled their search engine conception, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” presented at the 1998 World Wide Web Conference: “We expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers. This type of bias is very difficult to detect but could still have a significant effect on the market…we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is crucial to have a competitive search engine that is transparent and in the academic realm.”

Google’s first revenues depended instead on exclusive licensing deals to provide web services to portals such as Yahoo! and Japan’s BIGLOBE. It also generated modest revenue from sponsored ads linked to search query keywords. There were other models for consideration. Rival search engines such as Overture, used exclusively by the then-giant portal AOL, or Inktomi, the search engine adopted by Microsoft, collected revenues from the sites whose pages they indexed. Overture was also successful in attracting online ads with its policy of allowing advertisers to pay for high-ranking search listings, the very format that Brin and Page scorned.

Prominent analysts publicly doubted whether Google could compete with its more-established rivals. As the New York Times asked, “Can Google create a business model even remotely as good as its technology?” A well-known Forrester Research analyst proclaimed that there were only a few ways for Google to make money with Search: “build a portal [like Yahoo!]…partner with a portal…license the technology…wait for a big company to purchase them.”

Despite these general misgivings about Google’s viability, the firm’s prestigious venture backing gave the founders confidence in their ability to raise money. This changed abruptly in April 2000, when the legendary dot-com economy began its steep plunge into recession, and Silicon Valley’s Garden of Eden unexpectedly became the epicenter of a financial earthquake.

The idea of being able to deliver a particular message to a particular person at just the moment when it might have a high probability of actually influencing his or her behavior was, and had always been, the holy grail of advertising.

By mid-April, Silicon Valley’s fast-money culture of privilege was under siege with the implosion of what came to be known as the “dot-com bubble.” It is easy to forget exactly how terrifying things were for the valley’s ambitious young people and their slightly older investors. Startups with outsized valuations just months earlier were suddenly forced to shutter. Prominent articles such as “Doom Stalks the Dotcoms” noted that the stock prices of Wall Street’s most-revered internet “high flyers” were “down for the count,” with many of them trading below their initial offering price: “With many dotcoms declining, neither venture capitalists nor Wall Street is eager to give them a dime…” The news brimmed with descriptions of shell-shocked investors. The week of April 10 saw the worst decline in the history of the NASDAQ, where many internet companies had gone public, and there was a growing consensus that the “game” had irreversibly changed.

As the business environment in Silicon Valley unraveled, investors’ prospects for cashing out by selling Google to a big company seemed far less likely, and they were not immune to the rising tide of panic. Many Google investors began to express doubts about the company’s prospects, and some threatened to withdraw support. Pressure for profit mounted sharply, despite the fact that Google Search was widely considered the best of all the search engines, traffic to its website was surging, and a thousand résumés flooded the firm’s Mountain View office each day. Page and Brin were seen to be moving too slowly, and their top venture capitalists, John Doerr from Kleiner Perkins and Michael Moritz from Sequoia, were frustrated. According to Google chronicler Steven Levy, “The VCs were screaming bloody murder. Tech’s salad days were over, and it wasn’t certain that Google would avoid becoming another crushed radish.”

The specific character of Silicon Valley’s venture funding, especially during the years leading up to dangerous levels of startup inflation, also contributed to a growing sense of emergency at Google. As Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter and his colleague Michel Ferrary found in their study of valley venture firms, ��A connection with a high-status VC firm signals the high status of the startup and encourages other agents to link to it.” These themes may seem obvious now, but it is useful to mark the anxiety of those months of sudden crisis. Prestigious risk investment functioned as a form of vetting — much like acceptance to a top university sorts and legitimates students, elevating a few against the backdrop of the many — especially in the “uncertain” environment characteristic of high-tech investing. Loss of that high-status signaling power assigned a young company to a long list of also-rans in Silicon Valley’s fast-moving saga.

Other research findings point to the consequences of the impatient money that flooded the valley as inflationary hype drew speculators and ratcheted up the volatility of venture funding. Studies of pre-bubble investment patterns showed a “big-score” mentality in which bad results tended to stimulate increased investing as funders chased the belief that some young company would suddenly discover the elusive business model destined to turn all their bets into rivers of gold. Startup mortality rates in Silicon Valley outstripped those for other venture capital centers such as Boston and Washington, DC, with impatient money producing a few big wins and many losses. Impatient money is also reflected in the size of Silicon Valley startups, which during this period were significantly smaller than in other regions, employing an average of 68 employees as compared to an average of 112 in the rest of the country. This reflects an interest in quick returns without spending much time on growing a business or deepening its talent base, let alone developing the institutional capabilities. These propensities were exacerbated by the larger Silicon Valley culture, where net worth was celebrated as the sole measure of success for valley parents and their children.

For all their genius and principled insights, Brin and Page could not ignore the mounting sense of emergency. By December 2000, the Wall Street Journal reported on the new “mantra” emerging from Silicon Valley’s investment community: “Simply displaying the ability to make money will not be enough to remain a major player in the years ahead. What will be required will be an ability to show sustained and exponential profits.”

The declaration of a state of exception functions in politics as cover for the suspension of the rule of law and the introduction of new executive powers justified by crisis. At Google in late 2000, it became a rationale for annulling the reciprocal relationship that existed between Google and its users, steeling the founders to abandon their passionate and public opposition to advertising. As a specific response to investors’ anxiety, the founders tasked the tiny AdWords team with the objective of looking for ways to make more money. Page demanded that the whole process be simplified for advertisers. In this new approach, he insisted that advertisers “shouldn’t even get involved with choosing keywords — Google would choose them.”

Operationally, this meant that Google would turn its own growing cache of behavioral data and its computational power and expertise toward the single task of matching ads with queries. New rhetoric took hold to legitimate this unusual move. If there was to be advertising, then it had to be “relevant” to users. Ads would no longer be linked to keywords in a search query, but rather a particular ad would be “targeted” to a particular individual. Securing this holy grail of advertising would ensure relevance to users and value to Advertisers.

Absent from the new rhetoric was the fact that in pursuit of this new aim, Google would cross into virgin territory by exploiting sensitivities that only its exclusive and detailed collateral behavioral data about millions and later billions of users could reveal. To meet the new objective, the behavioral value reinvestment cycle was rapidly and secretly subordinated to a larger and more complex undertaking. The raw materials that had been solely used to improve the quality of search results would now also be put to use in the service of targeting advertising to individual users. Some data would continue to be applied to service improvement, but the growing stores of collateral signals would be repurposed to improve the profitability of ads for both Google and its advertisers. These behavioral data available for uses beyond service improvement constituted a surplus, and it was on the strength of this behavioral surplus that the young company would find its way to the “sustained and exponential profits” that would be necessary for survival. Thanks to a perceived emergency, a new mutation began to gather form and quietly slip its moorings in the implicit advocacy-oriented social contract of the firm’s original relationship with users.

Google’s declared state of exception was the backdrop for 2002, the watershed year during which surveillance capitalism took root. The firm’s appreciation of behavioral surplus crossed another threshold that April, when the data logs team arrived at their offices one morning to find that a peculiar phrase had surged to the top of the search queries: “Carol Brady’s maiden name.” Why the sudden interest in a 1970s television character? It was data scientist and logs team member Amit Patel who recounted the event to the New York Times, noting, “You can’t interpret it unless you know what else is going on in the world.”

The team went to work to solve the puzzle. First, they discerned that the pattern of queries had produced five separate spikes, each beginning at forty-eight minutes after the hour. Then they learned that the query pattern occurred during the airing of the popular TV show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The spikes reflected the successive time zones during which the show aired, ending in Hawaii. In each time zone, the show’s host posed the question of Carol Brady’s maiden name, and in each zone the queries immediately flooded into Google’s servers.

As the New York Times reported, “The precision of the Carol Brady data was eye-opening for some.” Even Brin was stunned by the clarity of Search’s predictive power, revealing events and trends before they “hit the radar” of traditional media. As he told the Times, “It was like trying an electron microscope for the first time. It was like a moment-by-moment barometer.” Google executives were described by the Times as reluctant to share their thoughts about how their massive stores of query data might be commercialized. “There is tremendous opportunity with this data,” one executive confided.

Just a month before the Carol Brady moment, while the AdWords team was already working on new approaches, Brin and Page hired Eric Schmidt, an experienced executive, engineer, and computer science Ph.D., as chairman. By August, they appointed him to the CEO’s role. Doerr and Moritz had been pushing the founders to hire a professional manager who would know how to pivot the firm toward profit. Schmidt immediately implemented a “belt-tightening” program, grabbing the budgetary reins and heightening the general sense of financial alarm as fund-raising prospects came under threat. A squeeze on workspace found him unexpectedly sharing his office with none other than Amit Patel.

Schmidt later boasted that as a result of their close quarters over the course of several months, he had instant access to better revenue figures than did his own financial planners. We do not know (and may never know) what other insights Schmidt might have gleaned from Patel about the predictive power of Google’s behavioral data stores, but there is no doubt that a deeper grasp of the predictive power of data quickly shaped Google’s specific response to financial emergency, triggering the crucial mutation that ultimately turned AdWords, Google, the internet, and the very nature of information capitalism toward an astonishingly lucrative surveillance project.

That this no longer seems astonishing to us, or perhaps even worthy of note, is evidence of the profound psychic numbing that has inured us to a bold and unprecedented shift in capitalist methods.

Google’s earliest ads had been considered more effective than most online advertising at the time because they were linked to search queries and Google could track when users actually clicked on an ad, known as the “click-through” rate. Despite this, advertisers were billed in the conventional manner according to how many people viewed an ad. As Search expanded, Google created the self-service system called AdWords, in which a search that used the advertiser’s keyword would include that advertiser’s text box and a link to its landing page. Ad pricing depended upon the ad’s position on the search results page.

Rival search startup Overture had developed an online auction system for web page placement that allowed it to scale online advertising targeted to keywords. Google would produce a transformational enhancement to that model, one that was destined to alter the course of information capitalism. As a Bloomberg journalist explained in 2006, “Google maximizes the revenue it gets from that precious real estate by giving its best position to the advertiser who is likely to pay Google the most in total, based on the price per click multiplied by Google’s estimate of the likelihood that someone will actually click on the ad.” That pivotal multiplier was the result of Google’s advanced computational capabilities trained on its most significant and secret discovery: behavioral surplus. From this point forward, the combination of ever-increasing machine intelligence and ever-more-vast supplies of behavioral surplus would become the foundation of an unprecedented logic of accumulation. Google’s reinvestment priorities would shift from merely improving its user offerings to inventing and institutionalizing the most far-reaching and technologically advanced raw-material supply operations that the world had ever seen. Henceforth, revenues and growth would depend upon more behavioral surplus.

Google’s many patents filed during those early years illustrate the explosion of discovery, inventiveness, and complexity detonated by the state of exception that led to these crucial innovations and the firm’s determination to advance the capture of behavioral surplus. One patent submitted in 2003 by three of the firm’s top computer scientists is titled “Generating User Information for Use in Targeted Advertising.” The patent is emblematic of the new mutation and the emerging logic of accumulation that would define Google’s success. Of even greater interest, it also provides an unusual glimpse into the “economic orientation” baked deep into the technology cake by reflecting the mindset of Google’s distinguished scientists as they harnessed their knowledge to the firm’s new aims. In this way, the patent stands as a treatise on a new political economics of clicks and its moral universe, before the company learned to disguise this project in a fog of euphemism.

The patent reveals a pivoting of the backstage operation toward Google’s new audience of genuine customers. “The present invention concerns advertising,” the inventors announce. Despite the enormous quantity of demographic data available to advertisers, the scientists note that much of an ad budget “is simply wasted…it is very difficult to identify and eliminate such waste.”

Advertising had always been a guessing game: art, relationships, conventional wisdom, standard practice, but never “science.” The idea of being able to deliver a particular message to a particular person at just the moment when it might have a high probability of actually influencing his or her behavior was, and had always been, the holy grail of advertising. The inventors point out that online ad systems had also failed to achieve this elusive goal. The then-predominant approaches used by Google’s competitors, in which ads were targeted to keywords or content, were unable to identify relevant ads “for a particular user.” Now the inventors offered a scientific solution that exceeded the most-ambitious dreams of any advertising executive:

There is a need to increase the relevancy of ads served for some user request, such as a search query or a document request…to the user that submitted the request…The present invention may involve novel methods, apparatus, message formats and/or data structures for determining user profile information and using such determined user profile information for ad serving.

In other words, Google would no longer mine behavioral data strictly to improve service for users but rather to read users’ minds for the purposes of matching ads to their interests, as those interests are deduced from the collateral traces of online behavior. With Google’s unique access to behavioral data, it would now be possible to know what a particular individual in a particular time and place was thinking, feeling, and doing. That this no longer seems astonishing to us, or perhaps even worthy of note, is evidence of the profound psychic numbing that has inured us to a bold and unprecedented shift in capitalist methods.

The techniques described in the patent meant that each time a user queries Google’s search engine, the system simultaneously presents a specific configuration of a particular ad, all in the fraction of a moment that it takes to fulfill the search query. The data used to perform this instant translation from query to ad, a predictive analysis that was dubbed “matching,” went far beyond the mere denotation of search terms. New data sets were compiled that would dramatically enhance the accuracy of these predictions. These data sets were referred to as “user profile information” or “UPI.” These new data meant that there would be no more guesswork and far less waste in the advertising budget. Mathematical certainty would replace all of that.

* * *

From THE AGE OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, by Shoshana Zuboff. Reprinted with permission from PublicAffairs, a division of the Hachette Book Group.

Shoshana Zuboff is the Charles Edward Wilson Professor emerita, Harvard Business School. She is the author of In The Age of the Smart Machine: the Future of Work and Power and The Support Economy: Why Corporations Are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism.

Longreads Editor: Dana Snitzky

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john2983miller-blog · 5 years ago

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All You Required to Know Pertaining To CBD Oil

CBD represents cannabidiol oil. It is utilized to treat different signs and symptoms despite the fact that its use is rather questionable. There is additionally some complication regarding exactly how precisely the oil affects our bodies. The oil may have health and wellness advantages and also such items that have the substance are lawful in lots of places today.

What it is

CBD is a cannabinoid, a substance discovered in marijuana plant. The oil contains CBD concentrations as well as the usages differ significantly. In cannabis, the compound that is popular is delta 9 tetrahydrocannabinol or THC. It is an active ingredient discovered in cannabis. Cannabis has CBD and also THCA as well as both have various results.

https://isomist.com/

THC modifies the mind when one is smoking cigarettes or food preparation with it. This is due to the fact that it is broken down by warmth. Unlike THC, CBD isn't psychedelic. This means that your mindset does not change with use. However, substantial modifications can be kept in mind within the human body recommending clinical advantages.

Resource

Hemp belongs of the cannabis plant and most of the times, it is not processed. This is where a great deal of the CBD is extracted. Cannabis and hemp originate from marijuana sativa, yet are fairly various. Today, cannabis farmers are breeding plants to make sure that they can have high THC levels. Hemp farmers do not need to customize plants and are used to develop the CBD oil.

How it works

Cannabinoids influence the body by attaching themselves to different receptors. Some cannabinoids are produced by the body and there are the CB1 as well as CB2 receptors. CB1 receptors lie all through the body with a great number of them remaining in the brain. The receptors are in charge of mood, emotions, discomfort, movement, coordination, memories, appetite, assuming, and several other functions. THC influences these receptors.

When it comes to the CB2 receptors, they are mostly in one's immune system and also impact discomfort and also inflammation. Even though CBD does not connect directly right here, it guides the body to use cannabinoids more.

The benefits

CBD is beneficial to human health in various means. It is a natural painkiller and also has anti-inflammatory residential or commercial properties. Over-the-counter medicines are utilized for pain alleviation and also the majority of people prefer a more all-natural alternative and this is where CBD oil up for sale comes in.

Research has actually shown that CBD UK gives a better therapy, especially for individuals with chronic pain.

There is likewise evidence that recommend that the use of CBD can be very useful for any individual that is attempting to give up smoking and also handling medication withdrawals. In a research, it was seen that smokers who had inhalers that had CBD tended to smoke less than what was usual for them and also with no more yearning for cigarettes. CBD could be a terrific therapy for persons with addiction conditions especially to opioids.

There are numerous various other medical problems that are aided by CBD UK as well as they consist of epilepsy, LGA, Dravet syndrome, seizures and so forth. Extra research is being performed on the impacts of CBD in the body and the outcomes are quite promising. The possibility of combating cancer and also various anxiousness problems is also being took a look at.

CBD is the short form for cannabidiol. It is an important phytocannabinoid that is discovered in the hemp and also is understood to sustain the mind and the body in great deals of various ways. CBD items in the shape of Cachets likewise consist of cannabinoids, which have actually CBD removes.

What makes CBD function?

Just how does CBD get to function? The body of people has a large network of constituent receptors, the system of endocannabinoids, which is essential to preserving the total health, in addition to aiding the support systems for a lot of the physical processes in our body. Cannabinoids as well as CBD fit inside these receptors that help the body with its initiatives in maintaining good health.

Experience better health and wellness with using the CBD

You get to take pleasure in a feeling of calmness as well as more emphasis. CBD EC1V 2NX affects finding out favorably and also it likewise encourages understanding. It is additionally handy in reversing the symptoms of the Alzheimer disease. You can get a heart that is healthier by the use of the CBD has a great deal of advantages that it offers the heart, these consist of the capacity of lowering high levels of high blood pressure. You also get relief from the stresses that are part of your life. CBD has been recognized to supply restorative cures for signs and symptoms like tension and anxiety, thus assisting in the decrease of mental levels of distressed behavior. It additionally aids in decreasing the sensation of depression and stress and anxiety.

The wonder of CBD.

CBD is just a molecule, not any wonder. A lot of people can reap the significant advantages if they are provided gain access to lawfully to these variety of solutions of cannabis, not just to no THC or reduced THC items. CBD on its own might not constantly be enough to get the trick to work. There is a great deal of compelling proof to confirm that CBD works ideal when it is combined with the similarity THC as well as the entire spectrum containing various other parts of cannabis.

To be able to determine just how to tackle optimizing your restorative application of marijuana has been the motoring element that lags among the best experiments in the days of democracy. The outcome of this searching for is called clinical marijuana and it has actually been observed from one state to an additional and also one nation to an additional in the extremely current years.

The showing up of the extremely potent oil focuses of marijuana, CBD rich non intoxicating products and very innovative as well as electric systems of delivery have altered the healing location. This has actually additionally resulted in a significant modification in the general public conversation around cannabis.

This is not any even more a subject of argument if marijuana has enough merit as a potent organic medication - since today, the main obstacle remains in comprehending the utilization of marijuana to obtain maximum restorative benefits.

Are you interested regarding all the buzz with Hemp CBD? Here's a minuet part of the huge quantity of info I've learned looking into Hemp CBD.

The monetary market recommends that it's a lot more financially rewarding than the California gold rush that lasted from January 24, 1848 through 1855. A new research done by Forbes suggests that Hemp CBD market can get to 20 Billion Dollars by 2024.

The medical area is quietly waiting to see what happens with pharmaceutical facets of this phenomenon. "A WebMD short article states that The UNITED STATE Fda took a good check out the safety and security as well as effectiveness of CBD items as it considers just how to best regulate the hemp-derived substance going forward."

CBD is a sort of cannabinoid with over 100 various cannabinoids located throughout Hemp plants.

According to echoconnection.org "Cannabidiol, also known as CBD, is among one of the most abundant of all the cannabinoids. It's located in all varieties of marijuana but dominates the make-up of Hemp plants."

Hemp Oil and CBD Oil both are made from the very same plant though. Hemp oil is really helpful consisting of a great deal of anti-oxidants and omega 3 and 6 fats. Hemp oil is typically pressed from the seeds of the hemp plant, which suggests it does not consist of the exact same quantity of cannabinoids located in CBD oil or Hemp Essence which are removed from the entire plant.

Is CBD Hemp legal? "Business owner VIP factor John Rampton composes, "The 2018 Ranch Costs legislated Hemp and Hemp-derived items on a federal level. The DEA (Medicine Enforcement Firm), CBD oil from hemp is no longer a Schedule 1 controlled-substance, or medicine. Per area 10113 of the Ranch Costs, Hemp can not have greater than 0.3 percent THC by weight."

Are you still interested about this remarkable Hemp Plant? CBD oil utilizes the whole plant, while hemp oil comes from its seeds. CBD oil is made from a range of parts of the mature hemp plant including its stalks as well as flowers. To get CBD and also various other substances from the plant, they should be divided in a procedure called removal

Education and learning is the crucial to utilizing CBD for wellness issues or for advertising or investing in the HEMP CBD Market.

Nevertheless, I have actually directly observed some of the wellness benefits and the safety and security of CBD, Regardless of just how it exists, HEMP CBD Oil has played an essential duty in my life.

If you do make a decision to try the health and wellness advantages of Hemp CBD Oil, just be aware that all CBD is not the same. Do your home-work. Locate a great quality before you buy.

Disclaimer. The information in write-up is from my study as well as the truths concerning this HEMP CBD phenomena are slowing emerging.

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thomasslobo-blog · 5 years ago

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Global Smoke Extraction Motors Market 2019 | Manufacturers In-Depth Analysis Report to 2024

The latest trending report Global Smoke Extraction Motors Market 2019-2024 added by DecisionDatabases.com

Smoke Extraction Motors are developed for the areas with smoke control systems. In an unlikely event of Fire, fans fitted with these motors reduce the heat loading on the building and keep access / escape routes smoke – free. Along with fans, motors are required to sustain this high temperature.

The worldwide market for Smoke Extraction Motors is expected to grow at a CAGR of roughly 4.1% over the next five years, will reach 610 million US$ in 2024, from 480 million US$ in 2019.

This report focuses on the Smoke Extraction Motors in global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.

Browse the complete report and table of contents @ http://www.decisiondatabases.com/ip/28670-smoke-extraction-motors-market-analysis-report

Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report covers

WEG Motors

TECO

Siemens

ABB

Regal Beloit Corporation

Tatung

Wolong

Leroy-Somer

VEM Group

ATB

Havells

Dalian Electric Motor0

Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers

North America (United States, Canada and Mexico)

Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)

Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)

South America (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia etc.)

Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)

Market Segment by Type, covers

200 °C Class

250 °C Class

300 °C Class

400 °C Class

Market Segment by Applications, can be divided into

Commercial Area

Industries Area

Other

Download Free Sample Report of Global Smoke Extraction Motors Market @ http://www.decisiondatabases.com/contact/download-sample-28670

The content of the study subjects, includes a total of 15 chapters: Chapter 1, to describe Smoke Extraction Motors product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market driving force and market risks. Chapter 2, to profile the top manufacturers of Smoke Extraction Motors, with price, sales, revenue and global market share of Smoke Extraction Motors in 2017 and 2018. Chapter 3, the Smoke Extraction Motors competitive situation, sales, revenue and global market share of top manufacturers are analyzed emphatically by landscape contrast. Chapter 4, the Smoke Extraction Motors breakdown data are shown at the regional level, to show the sales, revenue and growth by regions, from 2014 to 2019. Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to break the sales data at the country level, with sales, revenue and market share for key countries in the world, from 2014 to 2019. Chapter 10 and 11, to segment the sales by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2014 to 2019. Chapter 12, Smoke Extraction Motors market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2019 to 2024. Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Smoke Extraction Motors sales channel, distributors, customers, research findings and conclusion, appendix and data source.

Purchase the complete Global Smoke Extraction Motors Market Research Report @ http://www.decisiondatabases.com/contact/buy-now-28670

Other Reports by DecisionDatabases.com:

Global Accelerated Solvent Extraction (ASE) Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2023 @ http://www.decisiondatabases.com/ip/20491-accelerated-solvent-extraction-ase-market-analysis-report

Global Solder Fume Extraction Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 @ http://www.decisiondatabases.com/ip/22297-solder-fume-extraction-market-analysis-report

Global Solid Phase Extraction (SPE) Consumables Market by Manufacturers, Regions, Type and Application, Forecast to 2021 @ http://www.decisiondatabases.com/ip/14498-solid-phase-extraction-spe-consumables-market-analysis-report

About-Us:

DecisionDatabases.com is a global business research reports provider, enriching decision makers and strategists with qualitative statistics. DecisionDatabases.com is proficient in providing syndicated research report, customized research reports, company profiles and industry databases across multiple domains.

Our expert research analysts have been trained to map client’s research requirements to the correct research resource leading to a distinctive edge over its competitors. We provide intellectual, precise and meaningful data at a lightning speed.

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#Smoke Extraction Motors Market #Smoke Extraction Motors Market Report #Smoke Extraction Motors Industry Report #Smoke Extraction Motors Market Analysis #Smoke Extraction Motors Market Growth #Smoke Extraction Motors Market Trends #Smoke Extraction Motors Market Outlook #Global Smoke Extraction Motors Industry Report

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crossfitchalkbox · 5 years ago

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CBD Oil – behind the hype

In 2018 the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) removed cannabidiol (CBD) from its list of banned substances and since then there has been an apparent explosion of interest in the stuff, with elite and recreational athletes alike reporting on the benefits they have seen in their recovery and performance as a result of it. But what is it, what do we really know of its benefits in exercise, and are there any risks in taking it?

What is it?

CBD is not cannabis!! It is a similar compound – one of over 100 cannabinoids found in marijuana or hemp plants. Unlike cannabis, CBD does not have psychoactive properties … so no high when you take it! Whilst CBD is no longer banned by WADA, cannabis and other cannabinoids remain so. CBD oil is either taken orally as drops from a vial, as a balm, or smoked.

CBD in the body

Like cannabis and other cannabinoids, it appears to impact many signals in our body … relating to everything from anxiety through to inflammation.

The science bit! What we seem to know is that CBD impacts the endocannabinoid system, antagonizing at least one of the two main receptors in this system (the CB1 receptor) to reduce the strength of signals in this system in both the central nervous system and peripheral tissues. The endocannabinoid system is involved in many functions in the body, including pain, memory, mood, motivation and motor function. CBD also appears to modulate certain opioid receptors, ion channels, transcription factors, and enzymes that are involved in not only pain responses, but also muscle relaxation, inflammatory and antioxidant responses.

However, mechanisms at the cellular level do not always translate to what happens in the body as a whole.

So, what does the research say? From research to date, there is some evidence that CBD can reduce chronic neuropathic pain in adults, reduce anxiety in individuals with anxiety disorders, improve sleep in individuals with certain sleep and chronic pain disorders, and improve spasticity symptoms associated with multiple sclerosis. In animal models, CBD has also been shown to reduce the inflammatory response and promote an antioxidant response.

What about exercise?

You may be surprised to learn that despite the growing popularity, little research has been performed on the impact of CBD oil on exercise performance and recovery!! This is driven by the fact that until recently it was a banned substance.

Much of the ‘evidence’ is from the testimonials of those who have tried CBD oil, or from extrapolation of the studies performed in the animal models and disease states stated above. Extrapolation from animal or disease models is not necessarily valid, as the body can function quite differently in normal healthy humans … in the same way that the response of trained and untrained individuals to a supplement can be very different! Testimonials are both reliable and unreliable – there is the potential for a placebo effect (which nonetheless can be a true response that can aid performance!), but also the potential to gain insight from controlled case studies.

Based on what we know of the cellular mechanisms of CBD, testimonials, animal and disease models, there are several ways that CBD may benefit exercise. These are:

As a supplement to reduce anxiety, increase alertness, and increase risk taking behaviour to improve confidence and responsiveness, and so performance

As a muscle relaxant, analgesic, anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory to reduce delayed onset muscle soreness and accelerate recovery post exercise

But we must remember that these must be scientifically tested in the field and in the lab before any reliable conclusions can be drawn!! When we consider the anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory responses, we must also consider the fact that there is evidence that both the inflammatory and oxidative stress response are required for long term training adaptations, i.e. to improve long term performance. There is the risk that by taking CBD oil we may be improving short term performance at the expense long term performance. As such, CBD oil may be something to use in acute multi day competition settings to aid performance, but may need to be used with caution day to day. But again … we do not know until we study it directly!!

What else to consider?

CBD is a plant extract and it is very difficult (nigh on impossible) to obtain 100% pure CBD without the cost being astronomical. This means the CBD oil you buy inevitably contains other compounds. Whilst CBD has been removed from the WADA list of banned substances, cannabis and other cannabinoids remain on it. A study published in 2017 in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 1/5 of CBD products they tested contained THC, the psychoactive (and banned) component of marijuana. If anyone who is a competitive athlete subject to drug testing is taking CBD oil, it seems likely that it is important they confirm the purity and composition of what they are taking.

This same study found that less than 1/3 of the CBD products they tested contained the amount of CBD claimed. Considering that we have already highlighted that it may be difficult to take in enough CBD to be useful, this may mean that some commercial CBD products have very little effect in the body.

The World Health Organization (WHO) wrote in 2017 that "cannabidiol does not appear to have abuse potential or cause harm”, although few long term studies have been performed to really be able to conclude this. Although this can also be said of many supplements on the market.

Conclusion …

I think this is a ‘watch this space’ one, as it does sound like there could be potential benefits of CBD use for athletes. However, more research is needed. In particular, whether short term anti-inflammatory effects negatively impact long term training adaptations and performance and / or whether any potential negative effect is outweighed by the positive effect of faster recovery, enhanced alertness and increased motivation that enable an athlete to train harder therefore inducing greater training adaptations to enhance performance. It will be interesting to see what the coming years reveal!!

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM); Health and Medicine Division; Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice; Committee on the Health Effects of Marijuana (2017). An Evidence Review and Research Agenda. The Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids: The Current State of Evidence and Recommendations for Research. Washington, DC: National Academies Press

Vuckovic, S, Srebro, D, Vujovic, KS, Vucetic, C and Prostran, M. (2018). Cannabinoids and Pain: New insights from old molecules. Frontiers in Pharmacology. 9:1259.

#CBD

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amanjadejablog · 6 years ago

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“The latest report, Smoke Extraction Motors market attempts to explain as well as understand the buying pattern to help companies design a marketing strategy that can attract more buyers. The approach empowers stakeholders to target audience more accurately and reap highest profits. via Pocket

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peopleexclusive-blog · 6 years ago

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Global Smoke Extraction Motors Market Share (2018-23): TECO, ABB, Siemens and WEG Motors

The analysis supplies a holistic summary of this global Smoke Extraction Motors market with the assistance of application sections and geographic regions Europe, The Middle East and Africa , North America, Latin America and Asia-Pacific that regulate the industry now.

International Smoke Extraction Motors market report 2018supplies a skilled and comprehensive study on the present condition of…

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bloglivehealthy-blog · 6 years ago

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Alternative And Herbal Remedies To Quit Smoking

Nicotine addiction is a serious condition and is one that is very difficult to let go of. Smokers who try to quit find that the withdrawal can be unbearable and so any type of aid that can ease the transition is not only helpful, but, can greatly improve the chances of success. Here are some all natural and alternative remedies that can help. The best advice one can offer to those quitting smoking is to try everything and anything to rid yourself of this cancer causing addiction and to become cigarette free. Acupuncture Every year, smoking alone kills approximately 5 million people all over the world, according to World Health Organization (WHO). Acupuncture is an alternative form of medicine that can help one to quit smoking. For some, the thought of acupuncture, conjures images of excruciating pain caused by needles being inserted into various delicate points of the body, not a pretty picture for the squeamish. As much as the word “acupuncture” conjures up such distressful images, rest assured that acupuncture needles are completely different from syringe needles to the point of being painless when inserted into the body. They are hair-thin needles made to shallowly prick the skin at specific points in the body, and the entire process is pain free. To help smokers to reduce their smoking or even to quit smoking, presuming they’re motivated to do so, acupuncture needles are inserted into multiple points in the ear. Those needles remain there for about 20 minutes. Amid sessions, acupuncturists use transparent tapes to affix tiny metal balls -- identical to that used in a ball point pen -- to the acupuncture points of the prospective quitters’ ears. They are instructed to lightly press those balls whenever yearning for smoking sets in. The gentle pressing of the balls stimulates respective acupuncture points. A study, involving 141 participants, drew a conclusion that acupuncture plus education was four times more effective than acupuncture alone. Acupuncture is also commonly used for stress relief and relaxation, and of course, this can be indispensable when quitting smoking. Hypnotherapy The Cochrane Collaboration, a not-for-profit network of health practitioners, conducted a study in 2000 to gauge the efficacy of hypnotherapy in quitting smoking. The study concluded that hypnotherapy was not as effective as counselling therapy because it did not have any greater effects on 6 month quit rates than the other treatment methods or no treatment at all. However, half a decade later in 2006, two studies showcased more promising results. The first study assigned a group of participants to hypnotherapy sessions. These participants had 1 hypnotherapy sessions once per week for 8 weeks, while the control group was placed on a waiting list. In week 8, at the end of the treatment, the rate of smoking cessation for the hypnotherapy group was 40%; 60% in week 12 after treatment, and 40% in week 26 after treatment. Even after 1 year, the quit rate was 60% for those who had the hypnosis treatment. Hypnosis is a very viable form of alternative medicine that is used not only for smoking, but, for weight loss, relaxation and motivation. It is definitely worth a try in your quitting efforts. Meditation And Relaxation One of the biggest obstacles to quitting smoking is the anxiety that results from nicotine withdrawal and this is where meditation and relaxation exercises can be of great help. Never underestimate the power of the mind in dictating what happens in the body. There are various relaxation CD’s that can be of great help, and also visualization and mindful meditation that can allow you to take your mind to another place, a peaceful journey that can alleviate anxiety and calm you as your body withdraws from cigarettes. Herbs That Help To Quit Smoking Lobelia The herb lobelia is used in many anti-smoking products, mainly because, lobeline, the herb’s active ingredient has similar effects on human body as nicotine. Studies have found that lobeline increases the level of the neurotransmitter dopamine in human brains, much in the same way cigarettes do. Dopamine is responsible for producing feelings of pleasure. Lobelia is a toxic herb; therefore it must be used only when prescribed by a qualified doctor, holistic medical practitioner, or trained herbalist. The herb’s toxicity, depending on the dosage variants, can cause several physical conditions, from dry mouth to convulsions to coma, and even death. What is more, people with heart conditions and high blood pressure, expectant mothers, nursing women and children should never use lobelia. St. John’s Wort As much as St. John’s Wort (Hypericum perforatum) is used to treat depression, some preliminary studies have validated the herb’s efficacy in smoking cessation. To put it into perspective, one study required all participants, who smoked at least one cigarette a day, to take 450 mg of St. John’s Wort twice a day parallel to taking anti-smoking counselling. At the end of 12 weeks, 9 out of 24 participants quit smoking, an impressive 37.5% cessation rate. While not all studies had positive results, more than 24 studies have found that the herb was able to significantly reverse depressive moods, and that it can help with post-cessation emotional disorientation. Up until now, all standard St. John’s Wort extract supplements were known to contain 0.3% of the active ingredient hypericin. A recent study suggests that another compound, hyperforin, found in the herb could be the reason why St. John’s Wort works as an antidepressant. On a cautionary note, St John’s Wort has the tendency to interfere with some prescription and over the counter drugs, such as, other antidepressants. HIV and AIDS treatment drugs, drugs to prevent organ rejection for transplant patients, and contraceptives. It is never recommended for pregnant or nursing women, kids, those suffering from liver or kidney disease and those with bipolar disorder. Ginseng Nicotine releases neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain and causes smokers to experience the feeling of pleasure, which, results in addiction. Ginseng prevents nicotine-induced release of dopamine, however, no concrete research has been carried out to establish the herb as an anti-smoking agent. Evidence does exist, however, that Ginseng can help. Ginseng can help with side effects as both Asian (Panax ginseng) and American (P. quinquefolius) ginseng -- the former more aptly called “adaptogen” -- can help the body to deal with and adapt to the physical and mental stresses of quitting smoking. Ginseng’s positive effect on the brain is implicit. However studies have found that regular intake of ginseng significantly reduces reaction time to visual and auditory stimuli; increases respiratory quotient; enhances alertness, concentration and improves visual and motor coordination. All of which can become impaired during withdrawal from nicotine. One criterion to select from the many ginseng products on the market is to pick the one that has been standardized to 4 to 7% ginsenosides. The next step is to follow the instructions on the label. Both standardized extracts and whole ginseng root will produce the most desired benefits. A daily dose of 1 or 2 grams of ginseng can be ingested by nibbling on the end of one root, which is soft and easy to digest. You can easily keep a root handy in a place of your choice, such as, in a car or in a drawer of your desk, and start nibbling whenever you feel like it. Milk Thistle The Liver plays an important role in filtering out the toxins created by smoking, it is, therefore, crucial to ensure that it functions properly. Seeds of milk thistle (Silybum marianum) can be used to produce extracts that support healthy liver functions. Silymarin, at 70% concentration, is central to standardized milk thistle extract. Studies prove that standardized extract of milk thistle changes the liver’s outer cell and prevents toxic chemicals from entering the liver’s inner cells. The extract also elevates the liver’s capacity to create new cells, which, activates the liver-specific antioxidants. These antioxidants then eliminate the notorious oxygen radicals residing in the liver. A standardized milk-thistle product should be able to administer a total of 420 milligrams of silymarin over three doses per day. Upon experiencing the expected result, which, should occur in 6 to 8 weeks, the dose can be reduced to 280 milligrams per day. Apart from loose stools, no side effects are reported with the intake of milk-thistle extract. Herbal Smoking Mixtures Coltsfoot is a traditional smoking herb. It can be found as the basis of many smoking blends. Smoking herb can serve as an alternative to smoking conventional tobacco, the latter containing tar and harmful additives. Coltsfoot helps in curing inflamed lung tissue, loosening secretions, and toning the lungs. Herbs That Ease Nerves Herbs that are mildly sedating have two-fold benefits: they soothe nerves and curb nicotine withdrawal. Green oats are believed to have both sedating and tonic effects on the nervous system. The post-cessation period will invariably call upon a varying degree of anxiety and panic attacks. While in such a state, passion flower can be used as a remedy. Mood swings and depression brought on by smoking cessation can be cured by kava kava, which, is an effective antidote to such emotional disorientation. Anxiety that follows immediately after you give up smoking can be alleviated by skullcap. It should be taken alone during the day, and with valerian at night as a natural sleep aid. Valerian is known for relaxing tense muscles. It is highly effective for insomnia, if that happens to be one of your quitter’s symptom, and allows you to get a good night’s sleep. Final Thoughts It is imperative to remember that safety of supplements and herbs in expectant mothers, nursing mothers, children, and those with any medical conditions and/or are under any medications is yet to be established. It is a prudent decision to speak with a certified health/holistic practitioner before taking any alternative medicine in the form of herbs or supplements to quit smoking. http://www.slim-fit-well.com/?p=2265

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talkherald · 6 years ago

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Global Smoke Extraction Motors Market 2018 Share and Development: WEG Motors, Siemens, TECO and ABB

A thorough study of the industry dynamics of this Global Smoke Extraction Motors Market research report.The market report dynamics trends are made up of opportunities and challenges which can be effective for its Smoke Extraction Motors industry. The following elements of this report list the economy with kinds, by consumption volume industry by Smoke Extraction Motors application, manufacturing…

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artsoccupychi · 6 years ago

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Can You Spot Neurotoxins On Your Food Labels?

A few years ago, I was taking my turn running the snack bar at the baseball field during one of my son’s high school games.

It’s not a task I relished, selling poison to children, but it was a requirement of the baseball parents.

A father at the game thought GreenSmoothieGirl selling Snickers bars and soda was a riot. I told him, “If you look at this table, I bet you can’t guess what my pick for WORST snack is.”

Can you guess? These were the options:

Laffy Taffy

Snickers

Hershey’s Chocolate

3 Musketeers

Red Vines

Roasted Peanuts

Salted Nut Bar

Spitz Sunflower Seeds

Fruit Snacks

He said, “Well, it’s not the peanuts.” True.

It’s the Spitz Sunflower Seeds (Dill or Barbecue flavor). They’re full of MSG, which is a deadly neurotoxin.

What is MSG?

MSG (monosodium glutamate) is a flavor enhancer–and the worst neurotoxin in our food supply. You can find it in cream-of soups, Doritos, ramen noodles, commercial salad dressings and dressing mixes, and thousands of packaged foods.

I’d take sugar over MSG any day, and you know what I think of sugar. The reason why is related to a painful learning experience in college.

What do MSG and other neurotoxins do?

In college, I ate Top Ramen and bananas as my staples throughout my sophomore year. Not only were these foods cheap, but I was without a car, and I could carry a bag of these groceries easily.

These are just some of the symptoms I experienced that year that I ate Top Ramen every night for dinner:

I found myself with terrible vertigo, falling off the sidewalk as I’d walk to school.

I kept getting viral and bacterial infections.

I was having chronic, debilitating headaches.

It took the whole year to connect my bizarre and worsening symptoms to the MSG in the Top Ramen seasoning packets.

Neurological symptoms are common in people who eat MSG or other neurotoxins found in the processed food supply. They can have a wide range of effects, depending on what area of the brain they damage and how many brain cells they kill.

Headaches and dizziness like I had are common. Other symptoms of MSG exposure include:

mood disorders

sleep issues

behavioral problems

cognitive impairment

reduced motor skills

seizures

Studies on MSG eaten during pregnancy showed that it crosses the placental barrier. The resulting offspring had neuron death and damages typical of adults eating MSG–damage that affects the ability to learn, remember, balance, and process information coming from other nerves in the body.1, 2

What are other neurotoxins?

In addition to MSG, there are a lot of different neurotoxins in our food supply, usually used as flavorings or preservatives. These include:

nitrites and nitrates in cured meats

artificial sweeteners like sucralose, aspartame, and saccharin

Bisphenol A (BPA) in plastic containers and lining the insides of canned goods.

Research surrounding all three of these neurotoxins shows how damaging they can be to our health. For example:

When pregnant women are exposed to nitrites, research shows they have an increased risk for complications like anemia, preeclampsia, and premature labor.3 Research also shows that exposure to high levels of nitrates can cause angina-type pain, heart attack, or cardiovascular death.4

One study found that consuming high levels of the artificial sweetener aspartame might cause lymphoma and leukemia in rats.5 A similar study found mice who were fed sucralose had increased rates of blood cell tumors.6

Scientists have determined exposure to Bisphenol A can cause health problems like breast and prostate cancer, metabolic disorders, precocious puberty, and infertility.7

Why are neurotoxins allowed in our food?

The FDA has approved and continues to allow MSG on the market. It can now be called by several other names to hide it in food labeling.

The FDA also approved aspartame and refuses to remove its endorsement, despite hundreds of thousands of health-related complaints.

Since the FDA clearly will approve chemical additives that have been proven to be dangerous, it’s up to you and me to take charge of our own health and to be educated about where the dangers lie and how to avoid them.

How to avoid neurotoxins in food

I’ve written before about environmental neurotoxins and how they can be tough to avoid. However, we have control over whether we ingest neurotoxic food additives. We just need to be vigilant.

Most processed foods have at least one of these neurotoxins. When you’re reviewing food labels, remember that many manufacturers try to disguise these ingredients by using different names. For that reason, look for all of the alternative names listed here.

1. Monosodium Glutamate (MSG): known to cause headache, flushing, numbness, rapid heartbeat, nausea, and sweating in some people; found in most processed foods. Check labels for any of these alternative names:

Monopotassium Glutamate

Glutamic Acid

Maltodextrine

Autolyzed Yeast

Yeast Extract

Anything labeled “Hydrolized”

Calcium Caseinate

Sodium Caseinate

Texturized Protein

Whey Protein

Corn Starch

Corn Syrup

2. Nitrites: known to cause mild dizziness, lethargy, convulsions, or coma; found most often in cured or smoked meats. Check labels for any of these alternative names:

Sodium Nitrite

Sodium Nitrate

3. Artificial Sweeteners: known to cause headaches, migraines, dizziness, anxiety, depression, and weight gain. Found in “sugar-free” or “diet” products. Check labels for any of these alternative names:

Sucralose (Splenda)

Saccharine (Sweet n Low)

Aspartame (Nutrasweet, Equal)

Avoiding neurotoxins in food is a challenging task–but one that’s extremely worthwhile when it comes to protecting your health and your family. To make it a little easier, I’ve compiled this information for you on a printable wallet card. Get it here and share it with the people you love.

Next: For even more health shortcuts and cheat sheets, check out the Genius Guides! You’ll get this wallet card, along with 9 other cards that can help you make healthier food choices, avoid dangerous ingredients, and keep your family safe.

–Robyn Openshaw, MSW, is an international lecturer, and author of 15 titles, including 2017’s Vibe: Unlock the Energetic Frequencies of Limitless Health, Love & Success.

She’s a Utah single mother of four and competitive tennis player. You can find a free video masterclass about her 12 Steps to Whole Foods, here–or her free video masterclass about how to Detox, Not Diet, here.

Resources:

1. Gao J, Wu J, Zhao XN, Zhang WN, Zhang YY, Zhang ZX. “Transplacental neurotoxic effects of monosodium glutamate on structures and functions of specific brain areas of filial mice.” Acta Physiological Sinica. 1994. 46 pp 44-51

2. Gill S, Barker M, Pulido O. “Neuroexcitatory Targets in the Female Reproductive System of the Nonhuman Primate.” Toxicologic Pathology. 2008. 36(3) pp 478-484

3, 4. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry “What Are the Health Effects from Exposure to Nitrates and Nitrites? December 2013.” Retrieved from: https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/csem/csem.asp?csem=28&po=10

5. Soffritti M, Belpoggi F, Esposti DD, Lambertini L. Aspartame induces lymphomas and leukaemias in rats. European Journal of Oncology 2005; 10(2):107–116.

6. Soffritti M, Padovani M, Tibaldi E, et al. Sucralose administered in feed, beginning prenatally through lifespan, induces hematopoetic neoplasias in male Swiss mice. International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health 2016; 22(1):7–17.

7. Konieczna A, Rutkowska A, Rachoń D. “Health risk of exposure to Bisphenol A (BPA)” Rocz Panstw Zakl Hig. 2015;66(1):5-11. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25813067

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lodelss · 5 years ago

Text

How Google Discovered the Value of Surveillance

Shoshana Zuboff | An excerpt adapted from The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power | PublicAffairs | 2019 | 23 minutes (6,281 words)

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Our personal experiences are scraped and packaged as the means to others’ ends…We are the sources of surveillance capitalism’s crucial surplus.

There was no reliable way to turn investors’ money into revenue…The behavioral value reinvestment cycle produced a very cool search function, but it was not yet capitalism.

Kickstart your weekend reading by getting the week’s best Longreads delivered to your inbox every Friday afternoon.

The specific character of Silicon Valley’s venture funding, especially during the years leading up to dangerous levels of startup inflation, also contributed to a growing sense of emergency at Google. As Stanford sociologist Mark Granovetter and his colleague Michel Ferrary found in their study of valley venture firms, “A connection with a high-status VC firm signals the high status of the startup and encourages other agents to link to it.” These themes may seem obvious now, but it is useful to mark the anxiety of those months of sudden crisis. Prestigious risk investment functioned as a form of vetting — much like acceptance to a top university sorts and legitimates students, elevating a few against the backdrop of the many — especially in the “uncertain” environment characteristic of high-tech investing. Loss of that high-status signaling power assigned a young company to a long list of also-rans in Silicon Valley’s fast-moving saga.

That this no longer seems astonishing to us, or perhaps even worthy of note, is evidence of the profound psychic numbing that has inured us to a bold and unprecedented shift in capitalist methods.

* * *

Longreads Editor: Dana Snitzky

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