Walter Forester
English 101
Professor Wendel
10-22-2013
Taking a look at our lives we can see how much we rely on electronics. In everyone’s home there’s a computer, in your pocket a cellphone. We live in the age of information, in a world where computers are becoming essential to our lives. We have become accustomed to being able to instantly look up information. Not only that but to connect with friends or family, to shop, or just browse around. Everything seems so simple, but like many other things there’s a catch. After reading the article “The data driven society” my opinion of the internet being a tool to research things got completely changed. I was able to see that not only can we look up information; we are the information and its import for us to be able to control how it’s used.
Everything that we do online leaves a virtual trail that anyone can access. What we “Google”, what we shop for, what we like dislike. All this is done to study us, to provide us with services or goods that we would like. We are all intertwined together and are being studied by companies as a “big picture”. It seems innocent however the so called “digital breadcrumbs” “reveal more about us than anything we choose to disclose,” (Pentland 80).
As scary as it sounds that we are being monitored all the time it’s not all that bad. People are similar to each other and our habits are as well. By monitoring the patterns we leave scientists are able to determine the way we interact to influences that could be happening in our lives. “it is now possible, using data analytics, to make a constantly updatable map that predicts were residents of a city are most likely to come down with the flu”(Pentland 81). Little things like that are great tools in monitoring our society’s welfare. Making Shure that we as individuals are safe and prepared for what could happen.
Using data to predict hazards is one thing however privacy of the person should be maintained. Like all things our...