ChapterPDF Available

Commodifying data without embodiment: insight from mindfulness practices as game changer

Authors:

Abstract and Figures

In today’s world, rarely a minute goes by without us checking our phones, tablets, laptops, looking something up on the internet, or use a smart object to presumably make our lives easier. We all know that these devices and our interaction with them generate a lot of data, specific to each of us as individuals and consumers. But do we truly understand who collects this data? Why, how, how often, where? What about all these pop-ups that are asking us to accept, reject or select cookies that are stored, while we are browsing the internet? How are they used? By whom and how often? What is their value? Finding answers to these questions is anything but easy. This article is an opinion piece summarising the two-year journey of a citizen, lawyer and mindfulness teacher very interested in the ontological and epistemological questions dealing with the digital augmentation of human and business interactions. The commodification of personal data represents a unique object of study. The journey can be described as a quest for finding the elements of answers to the above questions at the crossroads of body-mind- tech-law-business-ethics. It was motivated by the curiosity to experience first-hand how much one can (or not) understand a rather fundamental evolution we all face.
Content may be subject to copyright.
51
COMMODIFYING DATA WITHOUT EMBODIMENT:
INSIGHT FROM MINDFULNESS PRACTICES AS
A GAME CHANGER
Valérie M. Saintot, PhD44
PhD, Lawyer, Adjunct Professor at SKEMA Business School,
Researcher, and Mindfulness Teacher
INTRODUCTION
In today’s world, rarely a minute goes by without us checking our phones, tablets,
laptops, looking something up on the internet, or use a smart object to presumably
make our lives easier. We all know that these devices and our interaction with them
generate a lot of data, speci c to each of us as individuals and consumers. But do we
truly understand who collects this data? Why, how, how often, where? What about all
these pop-ups that are asking us to accept, reject or select cookies that are stored, while
we are browsing the internet? How are they used? By whom and how often? What is
their value? Finding answers to these questions is anything but easy.
This article is an opinion piece summarising the two-year journey of a citizen, lawyer and
mindfulness teacher very interested in the ontological and epistemological questions dealing
with the digital augmentation of human and business interactions. The commodi cation of
personal data represents a unique object of study. The journey can be described as a quest
for nding the elements of answers to the above questions at the crossroads of body-mind-
tech-law-business-ethics. It was motivated by the curiosity to experience rst-hand how
much one can (or not) understand a rather fundamental evolution we all face45.
How come we are so ready to leave the topic to others when no less than our psychological,
political, fundamental human rights and freedoms and economic identities are at stake?
44 The article relects the personal views of the author, which do not necessarily relect the views
of her employer.
45 I want to thank Rohan Light, independent researcher (NZ), who was instrumental in the two-
year exploration. I also thank Filip Lulić, Suzanne Dvořák and Per Nymand-Andersen for their
very valuable feedback. All imperfections remain my sole responsibility.
Valérie M. Saintot
52
Well, breaking the suspense up front: the commodi cation of our personal data happens
through highly invisible set of digital processes. It happens without us being aware of it,
without seeing it happen, without feeling it is taking place and without experiencing its
immediate impact or possible deep and long-lasting consequences in our lives.
In ve steps, I explain that 1) we are confronted with two big black boxes, that 2) the
advent of data driven technology and economy has led to a shift of traditional legal
paradigm, that 3) our identities as legal natural persons face an epistemic risk and that 4)
this risky disruption invites us to hone more our human attributes and use mindfulness
as a game changer. And nally, 5) I complete this journey by sharing three basic habits
to reclaim ownership and have a say on our data driven digital destiny.
1. A TALE OF TWO BLACK BOXES: ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE BLACK BOX AND HUMAN BLACK BOX
The personal data collected from all devices and whereabouts in the digital spaces are
stored, parsed, analysed, and traded to a large extent without human intervention using,
for instance, machine learning and arti cial intelligence. In this context, the automatic
processing of input data leading to puzzling output is often referred to as a black box,
illustrating there is no clear causality or explanation of the results. This data processing
step is conducted by sequences of algorithms. Humans are left with little but to deal
with the opacity of the outcome.
Concretely, it is very di cult to understand how the variables are combined and com-
puted to make predictions. For instance, it is nearly impossible to deconstruct if and
how the data collected visiting a travel agency website will be combined with the data
collected when looking at online pharmacies, with health data extracted from smart
watch logs being used, for instance, for o ering segregated private tailored health
assurance schemes to certain types of people. It might also integrate data generated
by sports apps detected through geo-localisations and compared to the data of other
users who have browsed on the same travel agency website.
It is even humanly quasi-impossible to categorise all the possible scenarios for such
sequence of algorithms to account for both its computing model and predictive results.
This is why machine learning and arti cial intelligence exists. One can certainly question
Commodifying data without embodiment: insight from mindfulness practices as a game changer
53
the ethical improvements to make black boxes auditable and impose rules to cross-check
them against agreed ethical standards. It remains that one can have serious doubt how
such a tentacular and decentralised treatment of personal data using machine learning
can really be regulated or standardised in any way. The challenge, quantitatively and
qualitatively, is that correlation is not necessarily causation. Do we want to grow and
shape our reality and society based on automatically generated causation leading to
opaque decisions, or do we want to do it based on a rmative intention? One cannot
exclude it is already a partially obsolete question.
And while AI black box gets a lot of attention, there is a second black box to consider.
One which is even more mysterious and complicated than the rst one. It is NOT com-
monly called a black box. It is the black box that we humans are to ourselves. Taking a
step back, highly aware individuals may observe the input they use (stimuli) and the
output they display (behaviours) but might well be unaware of what they process inside
themselves to connect input and output. Even more complex is in the human black
box the dimension of consciousness, that can be colloquially de ned as the lm in our
heads made of the unplanned overlay of our cognition, perceptions, and projections.
This touches the hard question of consciousness. Even with the most sophisticated
technologies, it is not clear how humans compute the information they associate in
their inner processes. This second black box pre-exists the rst one and probably is
the original against which the AI black box has been modelled to deliver answers that
normally only human intelligence could provide.
Figure 1 Double black box principle
Valérie M. Saintot
54
Making the human black box less dark takes individual and collective self-re ection; it
requires active e orts to mobilise self-awareness. One way to do that would be practicing
approaches like mindfulness to grow the ability to “switch on the light” and decrease
the mystery of humanity, by gazing inward a bit more than we are usually inclined to
do. It might not be something that you will hear from the tech gurus, but it is hardly
avoidable – conversations around data, arti cial intelligence, digitalization quickly
reveals us our long-lasting shortcomings as human beings.
The danger here is choosing to hide behind technology so we can escape asking the
difficult questions that set us on an exploration of the untapped knowledge about
ourselves. Humans have the talent to avidly get seduced by technological promises
which could make human judgement possibly obsolete. Think of dating app which
are pre-matching couples. One meaningful way to respond to this, would be to take
a step back and experience who we are physically, how we know what we know, who
we think we are and what we stand for. This will give us the mean to better choose
and respond more freely to the handling of our personal data in the faster changing
world we live in.
2. LEGAL PERSON, DATA OWNER, COMMODIFICATION:
CULTURAL, ECONOMIC, AND LEGAL DILEMMAS
The purpose of this section is to touch on some legal features from a civil law perspec-
tive as stemming from a European continental legal culture. It is not a detail analysis,
but this section will outline several legal concepts to help frame the re ections in the
rest of the article.
Commonly, in continental law, two key concepts bring structure to the way legal persons
represent themselves and their interests in relation to their activities in society. On the
one hand, there are legal persons who are subjects to which clear rights, obligations
and fundamental freedoms are attributed. On the other hand, these legal subjects can
have rights over various objects, use them (usus), draw bene ts (fructus) from them
or sell them (abusus).
Traditional approaches spent signi cant time de ning each of these features and how
they apply to practical life when exercising our rights, complying with our obligations,
Commodifying data without embodiment: insight from mindfulness practices as a game changer
55
or claiming the possibility to exercise our freedoms (thought, belief, opinion, and
expression).
It worked for two centuries until a new form of societal relations, intermediation and
interactions disrupted our well-established certainties: the digital economy which
boomed in the rst two decades of the 21st century. While the above legal concepts can
be found in many jurisdictions and universal declarations, most of them are nationally
bound, diverging in their details from one country to the next. In turn, new technologies
in relation to personal data are global, not limited by national borders and whirling in
highly dematerialized spaces, where con icts of jurisdictions and applicable laws are
not easy to be used as guidance or to solve.
A data automatic driven economy inevitably disrupts society yet has also virtue for
more sustainable decision-making. On one end of the spectrum, the legal frameworks
are slow to evolve and territorially bound to guarantee the prevalence of the rule of
law, the principle of proportionality, legal certainty, and legitimate expectations. On
the other end of the spectrum, digital innovation is fast paced, global and by design
escapes more common human understanding.
Fundamental concepts like legal person, property, monetization, remuneration, fair
trade, applicable law, competent jurisdiction to name a few are completely challenged
and have become to some extent unidenti ed ying objects (UFO).
Figure 2 Stability of legal concepts in a fast-paced digital paradigm
Valérie M. Saintot
56
It appears we are typically facing a disruption which will require a 360-degree rethink
of our expectations and certainties to solve the many issues from a higher level of un-
derstanding than the level where the challenges were created. It is not obvious how this
will be thought-through as traditional mechanisms and forums may not be relevant
anymore. Key actors have new power relations and nation states, tech giants, regula-
tors seem to whirl on di erent orbits. This article is a plea to make citizens aware, that
they should feel concerned about the challenges and empower them at their individual
level to react. Where possible, citizens should keep connected to themselves as whole
person and be aware of the data they generate and demand to be part of opportunities
to shape the future as voters, users, consumers, parents, learners, workers, and citizens
of the digital world, etc.
3. COOKIES DRIVEN PERSONAL IDENTITY: A SIGNIFICANT
EPISTEMIC RISK
The challenges posed by the intensi cation of the collection of individual data has
steered many intense public debates on several continents. Technology has imposed
indirectly but consequently a course of action which is hard to alter. The haemorrhage
of data being collected is here to stay, but it does not come along with a clear map of
useful interventions to contain it. It is unclear who are the actors (data collectors, data
sources, data traders, service buyers, users); what is data used for; how to balance the
protection of individual fundamental human rights and prevent unnecessary obstacles
to innovation?
The humanist vision of individual data protection born in 1970s Europe was leaving
with the data subjects the ability to steer the collection, use, alteration, and disposal
of their data. This could, to some extent, work until the early 2000s. From that point
on, the European way of data protection kept its course, almost in parallel, even after
the advent of data driven economy. Data collection systems got put in place relying
on the intense and sophisticated use of cookies to trace users’ digital behaviours and
whereabouts. Huge e orts were invested to cross fertilise data collection and analysis
and multiple products and services were derived from these sophisticated processes,
at a signi cant cost, both nancially and CO2 wise.
Commodifying data without embodiment: insight from mindfulness practices as a game changer
57
These data collection and analytical systems use complex algorithms partially escaping
the understanding of their developers, traders, users, let alone that of the data subjects.
To date, regulators build on a rather traditional and basic view of the identity of legal
persons, essentially focusing on the demographic data for natural persons or commercial
data for non-human legal entities.
The issue comes on the other side of the bridge when the data subjects are fed back an
image of who the algorithms believe the data subjects are, need, want, should read/
meet, buy, eat, see, hear, feel, etc. Digital devices nudge users to navigate bubbles
created for them building on the data that were collected from them. This is where
the epistemic risk is born. Users who already may not know well who they are outside
the digital space are led to believe in a digital persona which looks and appears like
them but is a blurred – if not a misleading – digital twin of who they are as shown
in Figure 3.
Figure 3 The digital epistemic risk
Knowing who one is relates to the notion of identity. It is not a new question but as old
as the art of philosophy or the practice of religion are. The lucky ones may discover it
in their lifetime, yet this remains a rare privilege. This context shows the magnitude of
the epistemic risk. It can be explored from multiple perspectives: historical, cultural,
geographical, religious, philosophical, psychological, political, or legal. In all disciplines,
the identity is manifold and largely subjective. The legal view of identity tends to prevail
Valérie M. Saintot
58
in day-to-day life in society. Limiting the ideas exposed here to the legal domain, it
shows that we are facing again a clash of space, time, and speed in terms of adapting
the law or creating it following a fully new paradigm.
Focusing on the case of physical persons, the law concentrates our public identity to
what is appearing on our identity cards or passports. In addition, the law being a per-
formative discipline in relation to national legal systems, it cultivates a nation-bound
vision of what an identity is. Current legal thinking does not really consider the new
digital data kingdoms. These digital kingdoms are built on non-territorial realities in
the borderless world wide web.
To conclude, while we already face a human epistemic risk of not necessarily knowing
who we are, the digital epistemic risk multiplies exponentially and makes the problem
more complex. The blurry digital twin created out of the data human persons generate,
and which were computed, reassembled, and presented as if they were reliable and
faithful, is a deep challenge for humanity. It has the potential to replace reality by fairy
tales. A best-case scenario should be cultivated, and the digital disruption should be
taken as a wakeup call to be born to our humanity. The goal is to innovate. The idea is
to let it take place at a more awareness level of consciousness. It should motivate each
of us to grow and work to own our unique individual identity.
3-MINUTE PRACTICE HERE AND NOW – Experiencing the complexity of
human identity
The exercise: Let’s explore our identity holding onto a question: who am I?
On an in breath, ask who am I? PAUSE
On an out breath ask who am I? PAUSE
Repeat 5 times. Observe what happens in your mind, in your body.
Notice your thoughts, sensation, emotions as they may come and go.
The self-re ection: Have you noticed how challenging it is to direct
your attention and to stay focused? How aware are you of the challenge
of knowing yourself? Are you ready to delegate the process to nd an
answer to the “who am I” question to a black box?
Commodifying data without embodiment: insight from mindfulness practices as a game changer
59
4. MINDFULNESS AS GAME CHANGER: MORE EMBODIMENT
AND PAUSING
What is mindfulness? In one drawing, it can be explained as Figure 4 shows.
Figure 4 Mindfulness, inspired by drawings posted on the web
In the West, the most accepted de nition is the one from Jon Kabat-Zinn which reads
“mindfulness is the awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the
present moment, non-judgementally”. The American Psychological Association adds
that “While (mindfulness) might be promoted by certain practices or activities, such
as meditation, it is not equivalent to or synonymous with them”. Drawing on both ele-
ments, it is helpful to explore how mindfulness can be a game changer in the big picture
at hand. Mindfulness is a way of being present to what happens to us which fosters
our ability to respond to the world. The digital world tends to by-pass our attention
and capture and direct our desires, will, thoughts, sensations without us being aware.
One key dimension of the practice of mindfulness is the fact that it encompasses the
person as whole, mind, brain, body, emotions, thoughts, cognition, perception, projec-
tions. It is not an intellectual exercise happening in the brain only, some sort of brain
Valérie M. Saintot
60
gym to learn to concentrate. It is more a way of intentionally being present to what
is going on right here and right now. The time and space dimensions are vital as the
contact with the digital kingdoms seem to delete the sense presence, of time and space.
The digital tentacles and roots are reaching almost every sphere of life and society.
Mindfulness gears the conversation beyond the trend which seems to reduce existence
to the life happening in the brain and leaving out of the equation the human body,
turning humans into walking software. The Covid-19 global disruption has been a fast
forward in boxing people into small, two-dimensional windows on computer screens. By
reducing our relation and ecosystem outlook to looking at each other’s face (providing
the video was on), it made the point of what is primary and secondary in our society.
The body has literally disappeared from the equation of interpersonal relations at work.
This may last and deserve fundamental rethinking. Figure 5 exempli es the shift from
brain focus to whole person focus thanks to mindfulness.
Figure 5 Mindfulness as a vector of embodiment
The less the body is part of the conversation, more the disbalance between human and
machine will be. This is neither positive nor negative. The issue is how much it happens
unnoticed and as a fait accompli, possibly leading to unwanted consequences.
When body and mind are decoupled, human beings tend to make choices against their
natural interests, for instance when browsing the Internet endlessly, it is common that
one forgets to properly breathe and oversee the tiredness in the body and in the mind.
At time, the digital binging e ect leads digital surfers to disown themselves.
Commodifying data without embodiment: insight from mindfulness practices as a game changer
61
The high level of disembodiment in relation to the digital is even more obvious in re-
lation to personal data. The work required to collect, crunch, trade the data, but also
the growing use of machine learning and arti cial intelligence to tap the data bring a
deep and far-reaching transformation of the legal and economic paradigms. The mag-
nitude of the shift cannot be su ciently underlined. By not really being aware in our
own physical reality of what is going on with our digital whereabouts, it is only natural
that the problem does not reach the centre of our attention. It happens to us instead
of happening with and for us.
3-MINUTE PRACTICE HERE AND NOW – Being embodied with the body scan.
The exercise: Connect to your breathing. PAU SE
Take a moment to direct your attention to the object you are sitting on.
PAUSE
Now bring your attention to your feet and legs. PAU SE
As you breathe out, bring your attention to your but, belly, lower back.
PAUSE
Breathe out, pay attention to your upper body, arms, head, face, ears,
sculp, hair. PAU SE
Breathe in and out. Experience yourself as whole person. PAUSE .
The self-re ection: How connected was I with my body – before, during
and after – the practice? What are the situations in relation to the digital
realms I could bene t if I was more intentionally embodied?
Understanding some basics about how mindfulness works is helpful. When we think
how we react to what we experience and how we make decisions, we commonly think
we are acting on the autopilot (breaking when driving a car to avoid an accident) or
taking a more analytical path (thinking when solving a complex math problem). For
Daniel Kahneman, 2002 Nobel prize winner in economics and promoter of behavioral
economics, the auto-pilot mode is known as system 1 while the analytical mode is
known as system 2.
Behavioral economics has established the foundation to use nudges to incentivize people
to make more rational decisions by providing an architectural choice to o er, at times
Valérie M. Saintot
62
lure, users to make a default choice. A famous nudge is the one to incentivize people
to take the stairs rather than passively take the escalator. It was achieved by making
people curious to walk on stairs painted with piano keys on them. In the digital realm,
nudging is used extensively to make website visitors accept cookies without taking a
few seconds to critically review them and possibly taking the hurdle of selecting which
ones to accept and which ones to reject.
By practicing mindfulness, one adds a third system to the conversation, namely the
inhibitory mode. By strengthening the inhibition muscle, one is led to pause and
ponder how to respond to an external stimulus. The third system has been theorized
by Olivier Houdé, a renowned neuroscientist. It describes well the moment of taking
a break between the occurrence of an event and the moment a reaction to this event is
expressed. The ability to inhibit a default reaction is a key mechanism for understanding
intelligence in general and the practice of mindfulness more speci cally as displayed
in Figure 6.
Figure 6 Training inhibition and pausing more
It is possible to learn overtime to be more aware and able to activate our inhibition
function. It takes to practice nding and pressing our pause button.
Commodifying data without embodiment: insight from mindfulness practices as a game changer
63
3-MINUTE PRACTICE HERE AND NOW – Learning to pause
The exercise: let’s switch on the light in the human black box focusing
on our breathing
INPUT = air in / OUTPUT = air out / PROCESS = pause in the middle.
Bring your attention to your breath. PAUSE
Follow the air entering your body all the way to your lungs. PAU SE
Follow the air exiting your body. PAUSE
Over ve breaths, follow every moment of a breathing cycle, what hap-
pens at the end of the inbreath before the outbreath starts? PAUS E
The self-re ection: What did you notice? Is breathing a continuous
process or is there a pause at the end of an in breath before the out breath
starts? How often do you take the time to be intimately connected with
your breathing? Are you aware of your breathing when using your digital
devices?
Now, bringing all three systems together – autopilot, analytical, inhibitory – one can
make a case how it applies to managing our personal data through cookies on websites
visited. To decide whether to accept, reject, or select the cookies presented, it takes to
inhibit the impulse of accepting what we are visually incentivized to accept playing on
our auto-pilot mode. Instead, it becomes possible to deliberately pause and personalize
our choices as Figure 7 shows.
Figure 7 Practicing the ability to inhibit our impulses
Valérie M. Saintot
64
Recognizing the value of the inhibition function appears central to retaining our physical,
emotional, mental integrity in the digital paradigm we appear to steadily end up being
merged into. Democracies will need to speed up their collective inhibition function
to just do that at the scale of society and adjust the speed of their interventions to not
become super uous.
5. THREE HABITS TO TAKE AWAY: MORE EMBODIMENT,
MORE PAUSING, MORE FREEDOM
Until further notice, in a world ever more intertwining the human and the digital, de-
veloping the human potential through more embodiment and more critical thinking
can be a way to embrace the constitutive – and at times unthinkable – huge disruptions
brought by a data driven world making data trading the condition to new prosperity
and wealth creation.
Mindfulness could be useful to help educate oneself to grow a dual awareness, the
human self-awareness, and the digital awareness to solve some of the complex prob-
lems of our times. It could help slow down the takeover of reality by science fiction
while we, as legal subjects, could speed our ability to make artificial intelligence and
algorithms more auditable, ethical, and transparent by switching the light in both
black boxes (human and artificial). Being more aware and literate of what makes us
unique as humans could possibly help shape differently the hyper hybrid future in
sight, seamlessly cross-fertilizing the biological and the silicon.
Commodifying data without embodiment: insight from mindfulness practices as a game changer
65
Figure 8 Mindfulness based pocket pharmacy to enhance our digital integrity
Possibly the least predictable variable in the whole picture is the evolution of the legal
frameworks in an ever less territorial and mostly dematerialized set of overlapping
metaverses. Despite the understanding of our inability to take rational decisions as ex-
plicitly highlighted by a long-lasting dialogue between law and economics embodied in
the behavioral approach to law and economics from Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler,
it remains a human privilege to choose to experience hope. Hope is an active choice.
It is an ethical attitude to stick with a sense of trust in the ability of the collective to
work for its sanity and health. This is how hope can become an active we can make to
govern our lives.
To complete this opinion piece, I would quote Eleonor Roosevelt to whom is attributed
the saying that The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams”.
My dream is to see the best of the human and digital worlds unite with the intent to
keep real humanity on a collectively chosen evolutionary trail. It takes to have a more
pluri-disciplinary approach making mathematicians, engineers, data scientists, social
scientists, philosophers, and ethicists work closely together to create – by design – useful
technologies serving humanity.
Valérie M. Saintot
66
SOME INTERESTING READINGS
B, L. F. (2021). Mariner Books.
Seven and a half lessons about the brain.
B, G. (2021). Presses Universitaires de France.
Apocalypse cognitive.
B, G. (2022). Report from Commission Bronner.
Les Lumiè res à l’è re numé rique.
C, P. (1989). MIT Press.
Neurophilosophy: Toward a Uni ed Science of the Mind-Brain
C, K. (2021). Yale University Press.
The Atlas of AI.
H, O. (2019). Routledge.
3-system theory of the cognitive brain: A post-Piagetian approach to cognitive devel-
opment.
H, O. (2020). Presses Universitaires de France.
L’inhibition au service de l’intelligence: Penser contre soi-même.
J, A. (2021). Éditions de l’Observatoire.
Les algorithmes font-ils la loi ?
K, G. (2019). Éditions de l’Observatoire.
La n de l’individu. Voyage d’un philosophe au pays de l’intelligence arti cielle.
N-A, P. (2021). Risk Books.
Data Science in Economics and Finance for Decision Makers.
P, J. (2019). Penguin.
The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and E ect.
S, C. R. (2016). Cambridge University Press.
The ethics of in uence : government in the age of behavioral science.
T, R. H., S, C. R. (2009). Penguin Books.
Nudge : improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness.
W, J. M. K-Z, J. (2013). Routledge.
Mindfulness: Diverse Perspectives on Its Meaning, Origins and Applications
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.