Who we are
This site represents the podcast This Human Business, which will also available, in audio form, on several external podcasting platforms, such as ITunes and SoundCloud, as of August 2018. The podcaster and creator of this web site is Jonathan Cook, an individual who has created these resources independently, without any affiliation with any company or organization.
As the name of the podcast makes clear, this media project is being conducted with an ethic that centers around respect for the value human beings in commercial settings. In a time when business is being taken over by inhuman processes such as algorithms, automation, and artificial intelligence, this podcast is being created to explore ways in which businesses can become financially successful while attending to the psychological, cultural, and social needs of consumers and employees alike.
The most troubling form of ethical abuse by business in our time is the rampant invasion of privacy, both in the workplace and in the marketplace. As a podcast and as a web site, This Human Business is attempting to stand against these abuses, as a voice for employee and consumer privacy rights.
The purpose of This Human Business is to share ideas, not to collect data.
However, the permeation of data-grabbing code throughout the architecture of digital communications has made it nearly impossible to be online and not facilitate the collection of data.
How personal data is collected through This Human Business and why
WordPress and Other Platforms
The web site for This Human Business is published using WordPress software, which uses plugins that collect information about who visits web pages, in the form of IP addresses. Will that information remain safe with WordPress? No one can guarantee that. Hackers, commercial opportunists, and overreaching government intelligence agencies abound.
Facebook, Twitter, Google, and the other “free” platforms are infamous at finding ways to secretly gather information about people’s online activities. If you follow social media links to This Human Business, it’s likely that a Silicon Valley tech company is recording information about what you’re doing.
The podcast uses the Castos hosting service, which gathers data on the number of people who listen to a podcast, how much of the podcast they listen to, and that sort of thing. As far as we know, Castos keeps that data in the aggregate, rather than providing personally identifiable data.
This Human Business doesn’t engage in any additional purposeful data collection for its own purposes. For right now, that’s the best we can do.
If you have any suggestions for practical methods to diminish privacy intrusions through This Human Business, please share them!
(If you send love letters to This Human Business, we are definitely keeping that data, stored in a special red box kept under our bed.)
Cookies
When you visit This Human Business, it’s possible that the WordPress software the web site utilizes will leave little data files on your computer. These files are called “cookies”. Their purpose is to record information about your web browsing habits. These cookies will last for one year.
This Human Business does not use information from these cookies for commercial purposes or share them with anyone else. WordPress, or 3rd party plugin developers just might, however. If you see any sign of cookies on your digital device, go ahead and delete them. It won’t negatively impact the function of This Human Business in any way.,
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
How long we retain your data
This Human Business does not accept visitor comments on this web site or allow visitor log ins. We do this to minimize the amount of data that will be gathered about you while you’re visiting this site. Cookies may be saved as the result of WordPress software, but those cookies should self-delete after a period of one year.
What rights you have over your data
You can request that we erase any personal data held about you through This Human Business, and we’ll do our best to track it down and delete it. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.