Electronic Introspection
Jun. 14th, 2012 07:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peristaltorThis is a kind of a flip-side to my last post on the intrusiveness of electronic data gathering. About as long as I've worried about virtual profiles being used to target me for ads, I've also kinda wondered about the very coolness of data gathering in the digital age and how that can be put to more productive uses.
For example, anyone can stand on a freeway overpass and record the license plate numbers of as many passing cars as one wishes. A lot of good it will do you, but knock yourself out. Ah, but put a scanner up there instead of a set of gooey eyeballs, and you can collect just about every plate number. Combine that with similar scanners at other vantages over several days and one can gather a near point-to-point map of the regular commutes of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands. This data can be invaluable in future road construction, for example, helping to guide which future projects are worth the money based on projected impact.
Ah, but my buddy (with whom I have most of these liquid-fueled speculative bull sessions) thinks that would be a violation of privacy. I doubt it, simply because it would just anonymize the data, not track individuals. Sure, it could track; but so could anyone. What would be the difference?
Freeway traffic is one thing. What about internet search data? Lots of folks have done this, but a recent analysis has answered the question of how much racism affected the 2008 presidential election. From the article:
It turns out those areas where the N-bomb is most often dropped experienced the greatest decline in the Democratic presidential vote, even amongst traditional voters for Democrats. Who says liberals can't be racists? That's just silly. Liberals are people, too!
Is this earth shattering in any way? Nope, any more than a survey of freeway drivers reveals that the point-to-point arrival time of certain drivers reveals through the time stamps that these certain drivers consistently exceed the posted speed limit. (And isn't it weird that these are often the same people we hear bitching about how late they are because of traffic? It's as if they don't even take their departure times into account. Hmmm. . . .)
We all know what speeders and racists look like simply because we all know some. It's good on occasion to remember that, as far as we've come, there's always room for improvement, and that means we need to talk openly about our real motivations.
For example, anyone can stand on a freeway overpass and record the license plate numbers of as many passing cars as one wishes. A lot of good it will do you, but knock yourself out. Ah, but put a scanner up there instead of a set of gooey eyeballs, and you can collect just about every plate number. Combine that with similar scanners at other vantages over several days and one can gather a near point-to-point map of the regular commutes of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands. This data can be invaluable in future road construction, for example, helping to guide which future projects are worth the money based on projected impact.
Ah, but my buddy (with whom I have most of these liquid-fueled speculative bull sessions) thinks that would be a violation of privacy. I doubt it, simply because it would just anonymize the data, not track individuals. Sure, it could track; but so could anyone. What would be the difference?
Freeway traffic is one thing. What about internet search data? Lots of folks have done this, but a recent analysis has answered the question of how much racism affected the 2008 presidential election. From the article:
The conditions under which people use Google — online, most likely alone, not participating in an official survey — are ideal for capturing what they are really thinking and feeling. You may have typed things into Google that you would hesitate to admit in polite company. I certainly have. The majority of Americans have as well: we Google the word “porn” more often than the word “weather.”
And many Americans use Google to find racially charged material. I performed the somewhat unpleasant task of ranking states and media markets in the United States based on the proportion of their Google searches that included the word “nigger(s).” This word was included in roughly the same number of Google searches as terms like “Lakers,” “Daily Show,” “migraine” and “economist.”
It turns out those areas where the N-bomb is most often dropped experienced the greatest decline in the Democratic presidential vote, even amongst traditional voters for Democrats. Who says liberals can't be racists? That's just silly. Liberals are people, too!
Is this earth shattering in any way? Nope, any more than a survey of freeway drivers reveals that the point-to-point arrival time of certain drivers reveals through the time stamps that these certain drivers consistently exceed the posted speed limit. (And isn't it weird that these are often the same people we hear bitching about how late they are because of traffic? It's as if they don't even take their departure times into account. Hmmm. . . .)
We all know what speeders and racists look like simply because we all know some. It's good on occasion to remember that, as far as we've come, there's always room for improvement, and that means we need to talk openly about our real motivations.