Ah, big data problems. These are the ones we mention that people are continuously trying to solve. We've had guests to the classroom report on their desire, and a marketing initiative discussing their ability to produce directed advertising to mobile subscribers by understanding data they receive about users and delivering marketing based on their preferences and environments. This article takes a look at the same technologies and views the dark side and even discusses the negative impact on freedom of our ability to process big data.
You remember Minority Report? Thousands of people walking around being retina scanned and then receiving directed marketing. Well, the realist in me initially thought, no way you can do retina scans from that distance, and even if you could, the time frame to sort through retina listings presents a huge big data problem. Both these problems are solutions that are being sought. What happens when the time to search billion records for a single match is reduced to mere seconds? What if the remote retina scan remains impossible but you can do facial, body heat, or some mix of scanning at a remote distance in order to identify a passerby? At what point does that scan become invasive or illegal of my personal space? Is this machine surveillance legal and for what purposes? Ah the joys of technology getting mature.
Idea and inspiration for this post comes from this article.
http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2011/11/techonomy-mike-lynch-autonomy-surveillance.html
No comments:
Post a Comment