Read the Article and Answer the Questions

Read the article available at the following link:

http://www.details.com/culture-trends/critical-eye/201305/sharing-biodata-on-apps-and-devices?mbid=nl_det_biweekly_news_20130501

After reading the article (and doing additional research), answer the following questions:

• What is your definition of “Big Data”?
• In your opinion, is data mining ethical?

The article talks about Big Data in reference to individuals that are helping corporations store and track information that is very personal to them. I think Big Data really started that simple, as massive amounts of data stored for individuals. It seems now that Big Data has evolved into not only massive amounts of data but massive amounts of data that can be analyzed in ways that can better determine who you are, what you do, what you want, what you own, and potentially guide you to who you will become in the future. While individuals take part in this Quantified Self idea, they continue to provide these corporations with more and more data to aid in their algorithms that guide them to cater marketing and provide feedback on the individual. To compare, social media allows individuals to share whatever they want with the world in ways they have never shared before but mainly through decisions the person makes in terms of posting or not posting something. These QS people are practicing the sharing of themselves but in a different manner, in data. I imagine that most of these QS people are focusing on improving themselves and quantifying who they are to find ways to improve themselves. While this is actually taking place, they are also improving the corporations that are working harder and harder to make money off of them and others. If every corporation cared at the end of the day about the individual, I think this all sounds great. However, most corporations care more about the bottom line and making their shareholders happy. This is where the use of this data comes into question. 

The link to the article below discusses transhumanism and how the use of technology to make decisions like this can take us beyond human. In the case of QS, technology can guide us to buy a product or supplement or to exercise longer or harder or to eat something specific to be healthier by whatever standards are built into the algorithm that guide us to ‘make decisions’ that clearly aid the corporation potentially more than ourselves. The transhuman idea is more innocent is corporations taking advantage but cannot be ignored. The end of the article discusses how the website Kayak places cookies on our computers and raises prices based on how many times you have viewed items on their website to create the illusion of value. This illusion prompts users to buy tickets at prices higher than they may have otherwise. While this doesn’t speak directly to the QS, it’s a clear example of a corporation using big data sets along with sales techniques to guide our behavior. Big Data could have a place, but we need to find a way to keep profits out of it and focus on the betterment of the human race. Corruption has always existed though and I would encourage skepticism with anyone showing you through data who you are and who you will/should become.

http://highbrowmagazine.com/2558-hold-ethics-surveillance-data-mining-and-destruction-personal-privacy