One big interest the individual and the commercial surveillance have in common is the interest in this personalisation. For the consumer a totally personalised object is attractive. Personalisation makes our life easier, at least at the first sight. We like to have everything as simple as possible. The requirements of a Quantified Self is what the commercial surveillance uses for its interests. Maybe we can name it a win-win situation.

The Apple Watch for example seems to be a great multifunctional tool. It is supposed to help to organize our daily life. “Receive and respond to notifications in an instant. Track your daily activity. Control your music using only your voice. Pay for groceries just like that. With Apple Watch, important information and essential features are always just a raise of the wrist away. Not to mention Music, Maps, and phone calls. Apple Watch lets you do the things you do every day, more easily and conveniently. As well as lots of things that simply weren’t possible before.“ #lifestyle

These are the words Apple uses to sell the watch to their customers. It is conspicuous how they emphasize how much easier the daily life will get in possession of this device. Especially with the words „just“, “only”, “more easily and conveniently” and “simply” the striven simplification of the life gets clear.

These are key terms which should catch the lazy consumer and which should attract him. For the consumer the watch is a personalized gadget which makes the daily life easier. But if we have a look from the perspective of the producer, the device provides way more benefits.

Besides being useful, the watch is collecting a lot of personal data from its user. It is not possible for the user to control which data is collected and in many cases they don’t even know about it. The watch is counting every step of its owner and it also knows where he is located. This way every step can be reproduced for days, months or years. And suddenly the Apple Watch is not anymore just a useful gadget; it’s more like an “electronic hobble”. #blackbox

Another example is the electric toothbrush: Through personalisation and customisation it should give you an even better clean. But it actually seems like the effect and usage for the company is much bigger than the advantages for the user. The benefit of the Bluetooth toothbrush in comparison to a normal electric one seems to me marginal. The increasing benefit seems to be manly perceived by the company, now it is possible to precisely analyse the tooth brush behaviour of a person. The object is to produce an even more personalized device, because that is what the consumer wants. So maybe the data collecting is not only a disadvantage but an advantage for the consumer.

Consumers are making the demand of a totally personalized product, but at the same time they don’t want to disclose their personal data. #DiscrepancyOfTheSelf Maybe it isn’t even something bad to collect the data if the result is an even better product. But the problem is, that we aren’t absolutely sure for what the data is used fore. The moment we publish it, we can’t keep track of it. And this is the point where some people avoid it and others don’t mind anymore.

We are dealing with our private information. A girl decides to wear fewer clothes on her Instagram picture, because she knows that she will get more likes. Some parts of our privacy are commodifiable and exchangeable. A lot of information like this ican be gained through personalisation. Jaron Lanier writes in his book about information being more important than self-invention. He is criticizing the mistake of putting information above people. He warns that sites like Facebook, Wikipedia and Twitter and therefor computer algorithm and mobs consider more important than the intelligence and judgement of an individual.