Oliver Stone on Pokemon GO and surveillance capitalism

[…] Once the government had been hounded by Snowden, of course the corporations went into encryption, because they had to for survival, right? But the search for profits is enormous. Nobody has ever seen, in the history of the world, something like Google, ever. It’s the fastest-growing business ever, and they have invested huge amounts of money into what surveillance is, which is data-mining. They’re data-mining every person in this room for information as to what you’re buying, what it is you like, and above all, your behavior. Pokémon Go kicks into that. It’s everywhere. It’s what some people call surveillance capitalism. It’s the newest stage.

– Oliver Stone via Vulture

Event: ProtoHack New York City

I’ve been to ProtoHack events in the past and they’re brilliant: there’s great speakers, it’s a friendly and collaborative community, and they’re very well run. It’s particularly useful for engineers that want to enhance their prototyping skills. There’s a new ProtoHack event coming up, here are the details:

ProtoHack is the code-free hackathon for aspiring entrepreneurs, business people, and designers. Either flying solo or in a team (up to 4), you’ll go from an idea to an interactive prototype in one day.

ProtoHack exists to show non-coders that they can create something amazing from nothing. We empower and enable the non-technical community with the tools, knowledge and connections that will help bring their idea to life and visually communicate it through prototyping. You have 9 hours to prototype your idea and then present it on stage to a panel of expert judges.

Get your tickets!