“Big Data” is the latest buzzword in technology used to describe the massive amount of information currently available as the world sinks deeper into digital. Every day, 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are generated across the world, 90 percent of which has been generated in the last two years.

This will lead to massive changes in the way our businesses and governments will be run, as many people voluntarily give away their data online, but have no say in how this information is then traded or exploited by third parties.

The future of Big Data is a world that is personalized, but not private, which makes us all vulnerable to manipulation.

When asked how this will affect privacy, panelists at the Big Data Day event, held on Feb. 11 in the Joyce Hergenham Auditorium, advised us all to “get used to it,” as the age of privacy is already dead.

Associate professor at the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, Paul Morarecu, mentioned that the Obama campaign could guess the identities of all 70 million voters who voted for the president in 2008, based on data collected during the campaign.

This data was used to effectively tailor messages to show persuadable voters the information they would be most interested in. The manipulation of data, and therefore people, played a large role in our president’s election, and goes to show how powerful Big Data can be in the future of our policy decisions.

While most people justifiably fear government control of our data, we have to ask ourselves whether it even matters when so much of our personal information is freely accessible online or held by private companies.

Apple and Facebook are just two of the 40 major organizations in the past few months that have been hacked, and according to Ars Technica, the FBI drilled Facebook employees last Halloween with a zero-day exploit to test their defenses in the events of a security disaster.

This security drill shows the FBI is concerned about protecting the Big Data, and thousands of American identities, private companies like Facebook now control.

Though I would love to side with the privacy advocates who hope to reverse the trend, it’s difficult to see a future that doesn’t rely on Big Data, because so many of us are already participating in this system. Therefore, in keeping with the times, the best solution is to increase our security and advocate instead for the integrity of private companies to use this data ethically.
What I fear most in the use of Big Data isn’t that these systems will be compromised, but that the information will be used so effectively that our identities and experiences will be limited by statistical analysis.

One of the most exciting things about technology is the ability to customize, but what happens when some day, in the not-too-distant future, we begin to live in a completely personalized augmented reality?

This could make cooperation difficult as our habits, beliefs and personalities are sliced into perfectly formed spheres, pre-determined by unseen data sets. We would no longer interact or learn from each other organically, and instead hide in our own separate corners of extremism.

The increased reliance on Big Data will continue to usher in a future in which we are under the illusion of our own individuality. With our most private thoughts, feelings and actions now owned and consumed by Big Data holders, we must be able to trust this information will be used responsibly, and continue to assert ourselves as people, not commodities.

Kat Smith is a senior creative advertising major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at [email protected] or by telepathy, if possible. 

 

Published on February 21, 2013 at 1:00 am