- Big Data's ethical implications
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Big Data's ethical implications
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As
you enter more and reading more about the development of the great
trend that represents big data, more force are taking the considerations
about the ethical implications of an absolutely unstoppable trend.
At
that point, it is clear that big data is already a clear consolidation
trend that will lead the technological landscape of the coming years. We
are talking about something that will clearly differentiate companies
capable of extracting information from the ecosystem from those unable
to do so, of a set of high-potency analytical applications that act on
information that, in a growing way, users deposit in the public space or
deliver directly in applications of all kinds.
Discarding
paranoid visions about it, but trying to anticipate the use that
different actors involved can make big data as technology, we should
start by considering that a detailed study of the data generated by a
user in all possible formats structured or not, united to a similar
amount or more of the so-called shadow data (accesses, searches and
non-explicit data of all types that are also stored) , they are
susceptible to offering a vision of the person who far exceeds the
knowledge that the person has of himself. You think you know yourself?
It has nothing to do with the conclusions that you could try to extract
from an analysis of all your activity, conscious and unaware, in a
network that retains everything. And even less with the ones you can
derive from a compared analysis with thousands of other people.
Tendencies, behaviors, influences, sequences ... originated in our own
behavior and in the growing flow of information that we decided to
share. Remember: We talk about everything from the sites you frequent
(geolocation) to the analysis of your comments, going through any data
you generate in a specific application to which a company can access: A
level of analytical unimaginable.
What
information do we provide completely voluntarily and without any
pressure? Millions of people voluntarily make their geolocations public
at certain times (Foursquare, Twitter, Instagram, etc.), their mood,
their interests, their opinions, what they are watching on television
(miso, getglue ...), which draws attention to them, the people with whom
they dialogue or exchange opinions, their map of influences and
relationships ... a whole world of information with diverse or
unstructured structures , in multiple formats, interlaced by
relationships of all kinds, and conditioned solely by a "who has access
to what". A public data is a public fact. Provided voluntarily in
exchange for a particular value proposition (communicating, sharing,
learning, socializing in some way) and linked to a profile.
Semantizable, with capacity many times to associate a positive, negative
or neutral feeling to a word, to a mark, to an idea. We're just
scratching the surface of all this.
Is
it possible to limit the use that companies make of these data? My
impression is that I don't. That we are slowly evolving to live in a
world where, inevitably, companies happen to know what purchases, when
you buy, how often, when you consume, with what attitude, with whom ...
and not because they are "spying", but because you tell them yourself.
We are already experiencing two-way communication processes that, for
novelty, we find it surprising: companies that constantly audit the
conversation and react to mentions of products, brands, opinions. Where
does a much more exhaustive use of the data, analyzed as a whole? Our
information, segmented by the possibilities that each one has to have
access to it: if at the time of the CRM we learned to measure the
businesses in terms of "informative intensity" and "level of permission"
to use that information, now these types of variables take all their
meaning: the best competitor in a given industry will be able to extract
a greater intensity of information and know how to treat it in a
respectful way , that does not benefit in a sense of "invasion" or loss
of privacy of its users. All this, in addition, in a context in which
the idea of privacy itself is in deep revision and generational
evolution.
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