Mary Shelley’s masterpiece Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus, shocked early 19th century society with the thought science could not only extend life but transform the human condition, in pursuit of immortality. Is there a difference between harvesting profiles/virtual psyches and harvesting bodies as did the body snatchers of the 1800’s? The intent behind the activities of Cambridge Analytica was to use the private information on Facebook profiles to target “susceptible” people with propaganda that would gradually change their view of the world — to replace one set of beliefs, gradually, with another more suitable, easily controlled set.

There is much in common between the story of Frankenstein and that of Cambridge Analytica, the business that stole 50 million Facebook profiles and used them to help their clients manipulate the electorate and perhaps change the outcomes of both the US election of Donald Trump and Brexit. Imagine our very personality and psyches being manipulated or dismembered and replaced with other parts chosen by an outside power. A power that wants to create a populace of Frankenstein monsters, to serve a master who cares not of a civilized, rule-driven society but one willing to reflexively vote for a despot, a thief, a madman.

How ironic that Facebook would allow politically motivated powers to essentially pull a scalpel and reshape those 50 million faces through a vast array of subtle methods and tools? This is the part of the story almost too technical to understand and why there is not nearly as much repudiation expressed by the media and others. Facebook allowed an app to collect psychographic data, that includes psychological and geographic data, through self-administered surveys, then gave access to the friend circle of every survey respondent and into a ‘black box’ to analyze whether the person is a target for manipulation. Somehow manipulation occurred through advertising, fake news and other undisclosed methods. Part of our psyche has been reshaped, transformed or replaced, make no mistake, Facebook is the 21st Century Prometheus, giving fire to “advertisers”.

Where is the mob to save us from subtle manipulation, a shell game quietly played on the electorate? As in the 19th century, we have to grapple with massive leaps in technology. Today we are close to a reality of perfect, personalized propaganda and its use by the most powerful 1% in the world. Philosophers, our society’s deep thinkers, used to believe that nothing can be known, that a person cannot truly be known, even to themselves. Many of us might unconsciously agree, therefore it is almost impossible to imagine that answering 5 questions can yield more information about a person than a spouse or even the target individual knows.

We have to ask ourselves if we want to allow mass manipulation through social media platforms like Facebook and others. We need to find out which firms besides Cambridge Analytica are engaged in this activity, identify their clients, and targets. We have much to learn from a fantastical story written at the time of great change by a writer of unimaginable passion. Mary Shelley has reached out to us, let us not let her prophetic vision go to waste.