Data spies: The dark and shady practices of Silicon Valley | Roger McNamee

This is how data harvesting really works. You're not going to like it.

- In this absorbing talk spanning the last 20 years of tech, Roger McNamee starts at the origins of the PayPal Mafia (which included entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Reid Hoffman) and traces them to Silicon Valley's global domination.

- Data is used by online vendors in all industries to make behavioral predictions for profit – often in unethical or cloaked ways.

- Did we sign up for this? Roger McNamee calls for a halt to blind participation and asks for a national debate on whether commerce based on personal data (but not for personal benefit) should be legal.

Roger McNamee has been a Silicon Valley investor for 35 years. He co-founded successful funds in venture, crossover and private equity. His most recent fund, Elevation, included U2's Bono as a co-founder. He holds a B.A. from Yale University and an M.B.A. from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He is the author Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe (https://goo.gl/re2n9H)

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