“You—yes, you—can be thought of as a constellation of collectible data. Your searches and purchases, where you click and what you “like,” your friends and followers. You are the sum of the GPS movements reported by your mobile devices, your financial transactions, your health and education records and your exercise stats, and all the tweets, phone calls, photos, emails, ratings and reviews you generate. You are digitally defined, in part, by how long you spent watching that video of hamsters eating tiny burritos.
Clearly there exists all sorts of potential for abuse here, and no end of dystopian fears on the consumer side. Could a health system’s knowledge of a preexisting condition steer you away from a potentially beneficial—but expensive to your insurer—therapy? What if big data turns cultural decisionmaking over to the computers, and the music industry perfects abstract formulas that keep spitting out Justin Bieber clones for maximum profit?
Balancing the awesome power of big data with responsibility will be an ongoing challenge for years to come. Until the dust settles, just make sure you actually like the cat video you click “like” on, because your digital universe is adjusting itself around the news.
Want to learn more about the power of algorithms? James Fowler joined Steven Strogatz, Andrew Lo and Seth Lloyd at “Go Figure: Predicting The World With Math,” part of the Big Ideas series at the 2014 World Science Festival.”
Increase the Internet’s knowledge of you by reading the whole article at www.worldsciencefestival.com.