Commoditizing Humanity

By February 12, 2020 February 18th, 2020 OFF THE GRID

DATA GREED?

As consumers, we are generous in giving away our data to companies that give us  a service or product that benefits us. Most consumers do not realize this is short term thinking.  There is lack of knowledge and information spread through social media on the impact this can have on future generations.

Think dating apps, search engines, social media, e-commerce, fin tech, geolocation, and so on. Companies now know what we like, don’t like, what we read, how we move, when we menstruate and how much, when we ovulate, how we think, where we are and where we are going, how our body changes, how we age, what we buy, etc.

If you don’t like sci-fi (like me), now you should suck it up and watch – if you are curious about the future of humanity. The movie Her and Black Mirror episodes are not far off – as in companies will or already know how to make you fall in love and basically have “virtual sexual intercourse” with you. In a raw manner of speaking – we will be f*&^ed.  It is not unrealistic that companies will have M&A activity where databases will merge, companies can also sell their data, or be hacked – and worst case scenario, have it fall in the hands of a digital predator – a Virtual “Hitler.”

As consumers, we are generous in giving away our data to companies that give us  a service or product that benefits us. Most consumers do not realize this is short term thinking.  There is lack of knowledge and information spread through social media on the impact this can have on future generations.

Think dating apps, search engines, social media, e-commerce, fin tech, geolocation, and so on. Companies now know what we like, don’t like, what we read, how we move, when we menstruate and how much, when we ovulate, how we think, where we are and where we are going, how our body changes, how we age, what we buy, etc.

If you don’t like sci-fi (like me), now you should suck it up and watch – if you are curious about the future of humanity. The movie Her and Black Mirror episodes are not far off – as in companies will or already know how to make you fall in love and basically have “virtual sexual intercourse” with you. In a raw manner of speaking – we will be f*&^ed.  It is not unrealistic that companies will have M&A activity where databases will merge, companies can also sell their data, or be hacked – and worst case scenario, have it fall in the hands of a digital predator – a Virtual “Hitler.”

 

 

 

 

 

Speaking with Alicia Chong, Co-Founder of BloomerTech – mentioned that right now the issue of cleaning data is very difficult because it’s compartmentalized. Images are now easier to sort, other raw data are very dirty, normalized or harder to interpret. Fortunately, regulations like HIPPA makes medical data is non-identifiable protecting privacy and people. Nowadays, companies clean their data and use proprietary methods to make calculations, often having small discrepancies with one another. However, if people integrate their data, eg. Apple Watch with Blood Pressure monitor and other things – in the long term aggregation and data cleaning to that magnitude is plausible.

 

Photo Credits: Unsplash / Shutterstock (Peshkova)

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