Jeff Bezos needs to stop following me.
Oh sure, I know that he’s “retired,” and may be tanning on his yacht, supervising a rocket launch, or just heading out for a casual run with his nine bodyguards, but he’s still watching my every move online.
I understood at first. After all, as a fellow business celebrity and widely read columnist (OK, a guy can dream), I expect special attention. Then I learned that I’m merely one of 200 million Amazon Prime members and that he’s tracking ALL of us — even the people with standard shipping! Now I feel duped, and well, ordinary. This needs to stop right now. As a VIP, I refuse to give away my valuable data to just anyone — especially not an ungrateful, two-timing billionaire.
How did I reach this point? By reading a few new books, of course.
Longtime Wall Street Journal reporter Dana Mattioli first tipped me off. In her just-released, must-read book The Everything War, Mattioli chronicles Amazon’s steady rise from an unprofitable internet bookseller into a sprawling, monopolistic mega-conglomerate with a vice grip on industries ranging from retail, groceries, logistics and healthcare to the cloud services now powering companies including Netflix, Apple and NBCUniversal. Many Americans are online throughout the day, with short annoying breaks to interact with other humans, and often, they buy things. When they do, that purchase data, first personalized, and then aggregated, transforms into a treasure trove for Amazon and its vaunted proprietary algorithms. Mattioli details how Amazon uses its unique position not only to hook us on fast and easy retail at every turn, but also to avoid taxes, exploit partners, copy competitors and squeeze out millions of small and midsize businesses. In 2023, Amazon took a whopping 45% of each third-party reseller sale. That’s enough to make this purchaser think hard about buying direct from my favorite emerging brands. Small wonder that the FTC and 17 state attorneys general now have sued Amazon for maintaining monopoly power. Is a breakup in the future?
Maybe, but now another former Wall Street Journal reporter (and Holliston native) Byron Tau tells me that Bezos might be the least of my worries. In his sobering, revelatory new book, Means of Control, Tau details how we all create a long and undeniable trail of data breadcrumbs every moment, every day, all the time. Our phones, computers, appliances and even air-pressure sensors in car tires, constantly transmit reams of operating and behavioral data accessible to the likes of Apple, Google, Meta, TikTok, manufacturers, marketers, defense contractors, government bureaucrats and alarmingly, unscrupulous data brokers selling our personal information to the highest bidder. Tau provides ample food for thought and he has practical, concrete suggestions on building greater digital privacy. Seems like I may need even more drastic alternatives to avoid Bezos and the ravenous data-gulping apps on my phone.
A private island with lush vegetation, an all-cash economy, and a ham radio transmitter? OK, but I’m lazy and would need robots to maintain the place. And couldn’t Bezos simply redeploy my robots and start collecting my data? He is determined and Amazon now has 750,000 robots in its fulfillment centers. Is this the start of his robot army? Luckily, I can consult MIT professor Daniela Rus and science writer Gregory Mone and their absorbing new book, The Heart and The Chip: Our Bright Future With Robots.
AI, robotics and machine learning are very distinct but interconnected fields, according to the authors, and so far, experts still are testing, trying, and imagining ways to use robotic innovation to solve problems. Rus, a longtime robotics researcher, maps out the myriad challenges in designing specific robots for desired tasks. None of this is easy, but all of it is intriguing, fascinating and for Rus, a lot of fun. Her example of the cake-cutting robot arm and the sponge cake disaster that ensued is a hilarious cautionary tale. I’ll have to invite Rus and Mone to the island to learn more about how robots can be imagined, engineered and integrated into our lives and communities. I clearly need a technology strategy.
Avoiding Bezos won’t be easy. As Mattioli recounts, when he was first searching for a domain name, Bezos registered Relentless.com, a web address that the company still owns and redirects to Amazon. Maybe he abandoned it because it seemed too sinister, too obvious, too revealing. We may never know. Whatever the reason, I’m onto him now — and I’m busy making plans.
Read in the Boston Business Journal
Larry Gennari is a business lawyer and chief curator of Authors & Innovators, an annual business book and ideas festival. Watch recent interviews with authors here. Gennari also teaches Project Entrepreneur, a business fundamentals bootcamp for returning citizens, at BC Law School.
