Frank Pasquale – Black Box Society – chapter 1 (pp 1-11)
It’s interesting to me how sometimes a business is considered a legal person, and sometimes it’s not. It appears that this distinction is simply based on laws that were arranged to benefit large corporations the most. Businesses have more privacy rights than people do, which is even more absurd when businesses use the lack of consumer privacy as a means of business.
Our data is being mined to benefit corporations. We know this, yet we still happily hand over our data every day. Is it possible for us to minimize or eliminate the amount of data that is collected on us?
Cathy O’Neill – The era of blind faith in big data must end (Ted Talk, 13m)
In a nutshell, algorithms are made by people, and people are faulty. We have biases (even with good intentions), and we make mistakes. To blindly accept an algorithm’s data as the prime and only truth is only dragging us down. We can still use data and have positive effects, so long as we keep in mind that algorithms are tools, and tools sometimes break.
What kinds of data do we blindly accept in our everyday lives?
Virginia Eubanks – Automating Inequality (talk, 45m)
Data plays a big role in how a company views success, but the data isn’t always correct. In addition, the algorithms which retrieve the data are often made by people who have no real-world experience with what they’re trying to get data on.
How could we measure success without using data?
Janet Vertesi – My Experiment Opting Out of Big Data… (Time, short article)
As my oldest is starting to work, the ideas of banks and credit cards are becoming a topic of discussion around my house. This article made me rethink my spending habits, and I wonder if I could successfully, and comfortably, go “off grid” with my finances and purchases.
One thing in the article that stuck out to me was the aspect of other people. I’ve been battling my feelings for privacy and my feelings of narcissism for a long time. I’ve been thinking a lot about being tracked, not just by Google, but also by, well, anyone in the world, really. I still remember a huge part of my life where I could essentially remain anonymous. It was lovely. Now, things are just… weird. I’ve “deleted” my social media accounts on multiple occasions, most recently for over a year (I don’t remember exactly how long, but it was a while). A lot of the time, my “friends” just wouldn’t respect my wishes of not having pictures put up before I approve them, and not to tag me in anything before I approve it. I had various reasons for these requests, but, like the author, some people just didn’t get it or didn’t care.
While advertisements are aimed to make companies money, could it also be that our information could be used to design products that we would actually use that would help improve our lives?
Walliams and Lucas – The Computer Says No (comedy skit, 2m)
This short skit highlights how some people take data as the truth over what a living human being says. The little girl was in to get her tonsils removed, but the computer data said she was there for a double hip replacement. She quite obviously doesn’t need a hip replacement, and the viewers are left laughing at the receptionist’s inability to see real-world facts when the computer data contradicted it. While this is laughable, it’s actually happening all around us. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that I, too, have fallen victim to the “data is the truth” trap.
We’re painting data inconsistencies or slight nuances in a bad light. While precise and correct data would be necessary for certain things (administering medicine, for example), I wonder if it’s not such a bad thing to have a larger margin of error in regards to less life-threatening aspects. If you’re using a fitBit, does it really matter if your number of steps is, let’s say even 1000 steps off? You’re up and getting active, and in my eyes, the fitBit data is more like a game anyway. It wouldn’t matter if a virtual character really walked 1543 steps or not because the game could encourage you to problem solve, thus working your brain, which is better than being sedentary most of the time.