Hello, my name is David Ronson and this is Talking Politics. We said we were going to talk

about Cambridge Analytica and we are, but we don't think that that's the real story.

This is about Facebook and this is about surveillance capitalism and that's what we're going

to talk about today.

Talking Politics is brought to you in partnership with the London Review of Books, Europe's

Leading Magazine of Books and Ideas. We've already had some LRB writers on this podcast

and we'll have some more soon. There's a reading list of pieces to accompany the podcast

at lrb.co.uk forward slash talking, along with a special subscription offer for Talking

Politics listeners. 12 issues of fearless, expansive, elegant writing for just 12 pounds.

It's a pleasure, as always, to have John Norton on the podcast. John's weekly column in

the Observer is the must read if you want to understand this story and more generally

what technology is doing to our politics. It's also a pleasure to welcome for the first

time Jennifer Copp, who is the coordinator of a new research niche living Cambridge,

which is about trustworthy technologies and that really is what we're here to talk about.

Jennifer wrote a piece in Open Democracy last week which said in different terms something

similar to what John said in his column at the weekend, which is this is not primarily

about Cambridge Analytica. It's much, much bigger than that and people have been missing

what's really going on here. So we're going to try and unpick that before we get onto

some of the wider questions about what the hell is Facebook and what does it want. John,

why do you think that people have missed the real story? What's wrong with focusing on

Cambridge Analytica? The main thing about Cambridge Analytica is that in a way it's kind

of like a throwback to the day, good old days, Richard Nixon and the Watergate plumbers.

...