You do not need "analytics" for your blog

Summary

It is my increasingly firm belief that computers are tools that strip us of our humanity, converting our behaviour and thoughts into data that can be captured and commodified by other machines and their owners. They are not “just tools” – how can they be when we consider who made them and for what purposes, and how they continue to be used in our social and work lives? The computer. The Internet. Artificial intelligence. These are military technologies, first and foremost. First and foremost and for a while now. And while certainly we must resist the teleology that positions these technologies always and forever thus, we have accomplished little, I'd argue, in wresting them free from their origins in “command control communication intelligence,” from that cybernetic move to reduce everyone and everything to code. Swords into Plowshares Many of us work in jobs that involve using computers and we are no doubt dealing with lots of data. We also have mortgages to pay and children to put through marketised education systems that have shifted the cost from the state to individuals. Living is an expensive, precarious undertaking. We have little to no freedom in forming the shape of our jobs, and the use of analytics – a term rooted in the military, surveillance and finance – in some form or other. If you work in digital marketing, you’ll deal in depersonalising, martial and downright hostile language every day. We undertake campaigns, formulate a strategy and tactics, track website visitors – often without them knowing – and convert prospects. Data is a key weapon in this war. How useful this activity is for anyone apart from Google is the subject of a different article. But consider whether you want – let alone need – to be doing this to your readers on your personal website. When I started this blog – 17 years ago! – I installed WordPress’s analytics plugin, which told me how many people were visiting, what they looked at and who was linking to me. I didn’t ask whether I...