Is Sauron stirring?

A fascinating, yet disturbing article by Steve Baker. His article, Rise of the Geeks, in The New Statesman discusses how increasingly much, if not yet everything, we do is monitored not just through CCTV, but by where we shop, how we use our computers and our cell phones. Whether we acknowledge it or not more and more information is being collected about us. Some where one or more entities probably analysing this blog.

Adam recommends that people read the whole article, as the two extracts convey only some elements of the discussion.

Extract One

One thing is clear. The amount of digital data that we produce will continue to grow exponentially. Those concerned about behavioural advertising are getting just the slightest whiff of what is ahead. Consider Sense Networks. A New York-based start-up, the company studies the paths we follow as we move around with mobile phones. In Sense’s computers, each of the millions of mobile-phone users simply show up as an anonymous blinking dot on a map. But by studying those dots, Sense’s scientists can ­derive all sorts of insights about what they signify. On the basis of which neighbourhood a dot spends its nights in, Sense can calculate average home value or income. Dots that pause at regular stops en route to work are train commuters. It is easy to see the ones that go clubbing in the early hours. Golfers, churchgoers, people who sleep around, it is all in the data.

Orwellian is it not? Then Baker suggests the information collectors can then use the dots to predict behaviours and markets. What is the 21st Century’s equivalent of 1984 as a concept?

Extract Two

As the global economy swoons, the prospects for the numerati grow brighter. Their efforts to target people carry the promise of efficiency and lower costs. Nowhere is this more evident than in the workplace, where employers can scrutinise the patterns of workers’ clicks and web browsing. One San Francisco technology company, Cataphora, has developed a system for evaluating workers on the basis of their emails. Those whose sentences are forwarded most ­often to others are marked out as “idea generators”, and those who pass on these nuggets get high marks as “networkers”. On a chart that ­Cataphora prepared for an internet company, each worker is portrayed as a coloured disc. Large, dark-hued discs are judged to be the most active, and therefore the most effective. And small, pale ones? They may be the first to be considered when it comes to workforce reduction.

Fired by computer analysis. Can you imagine the discussion with HR, you argung about value and HR saying ‘but the computer does not lie’. Baker has some other examples in similar vein.

Actually when you think about it this could be said to resemble Tolkien’s concept of Sauron, the Dark Lord, of whom in The Two Towers Tolkien wrote:-

“The Eye: that horrible growing sense of a hostile will that strove with great power to pierce all shadows of cloud, and earth, and flesh, and to see you: to pin you under its deadly gaze, naked, immovable.

Now Adam does not imbue the numerati as Baker calls them with evil intent, but it is not rocket science to see that all this information can be used for evil as wellas for good. Further, steps taken with laudable aims can be abused.

So what steps should be taken to prevent abuse? How can we protect ourselves? Should we be worried?

Read the article, think about it and please come back and tell Adam what you think.

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