However, as I have thought about the issue more, I started wondering: what are the reasons behind our paranoia with big data? At first more of the practical reasons came running through my head, such as stolen financial information or having my home address released to unpredictable strangers. However, if our private information was safely secured (which more and more people are coming with better ideas to solve this issue) would we still have an issue with big data, especially when dealing with data that contains information about ourselves, even though it would be aggregate and unidentifiable? I think many of us would currently answer yes. Although it may be hard to articulate, there is something to be said about our own personal information being used in a large data set that is being used to understand human behavior. We might feel uncomfortable in some way, perhaps exposed. I will argue, perhaps with little popularity, that this is a dogma that should be changed.
While we do need to be very careful for reasons like the ones stated above, I think we have a little too much fear in big data. Humans have always taken new avenues to obtain knowledge. Should we criticize the statistician who analyzes ourselves behind a computer when we have rarely criticized the casual observer of humans at a park or city? We have never been able to have the opportunity to understand humans in such a large, unbiased way. There have already been many positive results of big data, one example being the health industry. Data has already been used by health organizations to better understand disease and save lives, all done with private, yet secure health information. Yes, we do need to understand the security issues, but I think our idea of what privacy really is needs to be more closely examined.
Interesting point of view, and as an actuarial science major I'm sure you have more of a firm basis to argue what you have. Still, I admit to being very wary of my personal information being available for public use in whatever form. It seems to me that the unscrupulous often have the jump on the security available to protect our interests.
ReplyDeletePrivacy is a funny thing because your data cannot be stored unless you send it somewhere. So, those who want privacy want to send their data over an extremely insecure cyber connection but don't want anyone besides amazon to see it... wait a minute, who really is amazon?
ReplyDeleteThe problem with wanting privacy is that it actually creates more opportunity for "bad stuff" to happen with your data. Transparency is a much better safeguard for cyber attacks. Unfortunately, it doesn't make private what you do on the web but it protects your stuff from being hacked into. So anything you don't use can remain private but your actions can't be. It's really a matter of whether you want your cake or if you're hungry.