Six Provocations For Big Data

One of the biggest concerns in the United States of America today is privacy. For its citizens, this concern is due mostly in part to new developments in technology and big data collection. Yes, this technology and data collection is beneficial for American citizens and is a step in the right direction for humankind, but to what extent? The CQ Researcher article titled, “Big Data and Privacy” by Tom Price answers just that question. More specifically, a monumental factor for technological advancement this article explains is the use of personal information by the producers of new technology and the collection of big data in this day in age. What makes this debate on the violation of privacy through the use personal information by businesses, as well as, the general population, is that big data collection is the staple of technological advancement and serves as a convenience for Americans. Although big data collection and technology serves as an extreme benefit in relation to convenience and societal advancement for those who use and consume it, how far will scientists, researchers, businesses, and the government push before it becomes a violation our privacy as citizens of the United States of America?

Examples include, for instance, large sets of Twitter messages or data extracted from Wikipedia. In their definition, boyd and Crawford (2012) further include the capacity to ‘to search, aggregate, and cross-reference large data sets’, further noting that big data, besides from its technical aspects, entails a cultural ideology, circulating around the notion that the accumulation and analysis of large datasets offers a new form of a more truthful, accurate and objective knowledge of the world (2012: 663).

These extremely large data sets may be analyzed computationally to reveal patterns, trends, and associations relating to human behavior and interaction. These analysesaffect us on day to day basis positively and negatively and the legality of how this information is collected and the laws that apply may be unclear. Both with or without users' knowledge, consumer personal data is collected from every daily, digital activity; from purchases, web searches, amazon searches, browsing history, and phone use. This data is generated, and then downloaded and stored. [15] Companies can then use this data to create "data sets" or large files of users' data to produce customer profiling. This data can also be used by police, the governmental bodies, scientists, businesses, military, and other industries where occasional breaches of data are expected .[16] Breaches and leaks of personal information including phone calls, credit card information, home address, and personal phone numbers are examples of information that is logged and stored by these corporations while making "data sets". Much of this information is being processed and sold to marketers for the purpose of marketing their products. This information is stored digitally and in some cases, regardless of the security of the information being stored, there are risks of unauthorized parties

Crawford and Schultz (2014) summarized Big Data as “a generalized, imprecise term that refers to the use of large data sets in data science and predictive analytics (p. 96). The various sources of retrieving and generating information has expanded and exposed its vulnerability, especially to health data. A single breach holds risks of sharing critical information from a multitude of patients’ records. Predictive privacy harms, which are collected information that centers on individual data behaviors, have the potential to sidestep existing antidiscrimination regulations, but also lead to privacy breaches in healthcare (Crawford & Schultz, 2014). In the U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States v. Jones there were concerns expressed about invasions of privacy that could result in direct collection of large amounts of personal information through Global Position System (GPS) monitoring. This type of governmental power is vulnerable to abuse, endangerment of privacy rights of citizens, and weaken trust in the government (Crawford & Schultz, 2014). Crawford and Schultz (2014) state that John Locke and William Blackstone defined liberty, as it pertains to an individual, as an “unabridged natural right follow his or her own will”. (p.111) In a sense, if an individual believes privacy fits the bill, then it should be respected and left alone. Big Data faces many obstacles when it comes to the topic of privacy. The question of how to correctly respond to each challenge may vary, but success can come if both just and achievable protections are present for those at risk for this type of

In the video with Jake Porway, he discusses the amount of big data that is available to the population, which is an advantage to everyone. He also discusses how another advantage besides assisting people pick a movies or a restaurant, is how social organizations can use this data to analyze particular occurrences and bring about change for the greater society (Porway, 2012). However, there are some disadvantages to big data. The data can be difficult to assess for those not experienced with using it, and it can be very expensive to hire someone to analyze the data Porway, 2012. The cost can be especially difficult for non-profits to afford (Porway, 2012). In the article by Peysakhovich and Stephens-Davidowitz, the authors explain how knowing how many times an article is clicked on in

There are several positive uses of big data including the development of more accurate weather prediction systems, research and production of self-driving vehicles, making cities smarter, and collecting more data during exercise in order to train in the most efficient way. The essential item in keeping this straight is striving to develop policies that reflect our ideals and then implementing it. This falls on the shoulders of the government. Minimizing the gap between the implementation and policy can be achieved through various venues. Transparency is of paramount importance when dealing with surveillance and entrusting other entities with personal information. If any person is being spied on or having information collected, they should know about it and of course it should be legal. Google as a service is a good example. Although using Google’s services are “free” to use, it sells our personal information to other companies for surveillance capitalism and marketing. Google should have an agreement or make it clearly known that this is what is happening and then provide an option to pay for its services directly and not disclose user’s information. Additionally, companies that participate in such behaviors should be legally bound with well-defined terms and be regularly

Even though “big data” is very valuable and has made many great gains for society in both efficiency and knowledge, with the increase in data collection and analytics there are many ethical concerns of how the data is being used because evidence based decision making within the analytics is often done solely on quantitative information, this creates digital inequity. Comparing and examining the works of Socrates and Martin Luther King Jr., we can develop our own ethical belief regarding some of the analytics used with “big data”.

The authors of [1] aim to dispel some of the current hype surrounding big data, mainly the misnomer that it is all about technology and the process is automated. In fact there are three critical elements requiring human expertise 1) the data must be the right kind, of sufficient quantity, and clean 2) a specific process must be followed for success starting with the identification of the objective 3) expert humans who know how to use the technology, execute the big data process, and perform the mining tasks which require significant mathematical calculations.

Many people have become so immersed in data, that they are unable to recognize the data that they have been exposed to. For example, many college students either watch tv or listen to music while completing homework. Students often time just see this as background noise when in reality this is data that become stored in your unconscious mind. The film Big Data gives a visual account of how much data streaming has impacted society both negatively and positively through the use of data analysis. Data has taken away the ability to remain anonymous and has also sparked a decline in human interpersonal skills. However, Data also has allowed humanity to collect new information providing new solutions to world issues. The film Big Data is able to

Today, it seems as if everyone is connected through his or her own cell phone. With this they create data and information, intentionally or not using them. This information can be collected from applications, text messaging, and simple just walking around with a cell phone connected. This data may be analyzed computationally to reveal patterns, trends, and other association relating to human behavior. The creation and use of this data is what today’s society puts under the large umbrella of big data. This paper discusses the ethics of collection practices and use of big data.

The promise of data-driven decision-making is now being recognized broadly, and there is growing enthusiasm for the notion of ``Big Data.’’ While the promise of Big Data is real -- for example, it is estimated that Google alone contributed 54 billion dollars to the US economy in 2009 -- there is currently a wide gap between its potential and its realization.

Accordingly, this essay will consider the importance of informational privacy and the potential harms resulting from Big Data use. It will be argued that the existing mechanisms are inadequate to address the informational privacy concerns surrounding Big Data.

Before watching Kenneth Cukier’s TED Talk, “Big Data is Better Data” I had never really heard of the term “big data” maybe only a couple of times. His TED Talk was intriguing at the fact because of this big data so much in our world today has changed already. I agree with the point that more data allows us to see more, new, and different because with only small data we would not have had some of the things we have today: finding cancerous cells, GPS, self-driving cars, and much more. For example, when you want to find someone’s location on iPhone’s all they have to do is share their location with you and by doing that it is recording all of their information for you. All of these changes and advancements in society can be a good thing, but

Big data is an extensive collection of structured and unstructured data. It is a modern day technology which is applied to store, manage and analyze data that are not possible to manage, store and analyze by using the commonly used software or tools. Since all of our daily tasks are overtaken by the modern technologies and all the businesses and organizations are using internet system to operate, the production of data has increased significantly in past

The analyzation of data—or the observation of information—has never been an uncommon occurrence; these analyses have grown exponentially since the rise of technology in the 21st century. The results produced through big data analysis have the potential to be paradigm-altering; the implications run much deeper than simply connecting x to y. Although its foundations have been interwoven into society, big data has only recently become a commonly known term. Still, very few are well versed in the subject. What exactly is big data? Danah Boyd and Kate Crawford put it in the simplest terms when they define it as, “very large data sets and the tools and procedures used to manipulate and analyze them” (Boyd and Crawford). This manipulation is vital to many large corporations as they attempt to harness the data in order to personalize the consumer experience in their business techniques. Since its inception, big data has warranted a moral investigation: ethicists have been scrambling to determine how this alien method of marketing should be dealt with. There have been the supporters of big data use, while there have also been those who disapprove,vehemently denouncing even the idea of such a thing. In this paper, big data will be described exactly, including the way it is projected to affect the marketing world, and how utilitarianism should be applied to the moral dilemma in order to reach a satisfactory resolution on the topic.