Data Mining is the product of Networked Individualism

What is a community? The idea of a community has changed throughout the ages, as technologies have advanced, and society has developed new ways of communicating with one another. People used to share locales with one another and enjoyed frequent face-to-face contact with those within their community. This organic and natural characterization of the locality meant that those within the community would often be disposed to one another practically and emotionally. This was the time when a majority of the world operated within Gemeinschaft communities. Through industrialization, “the shift from village to urban life meant that great industrial cities coordinated the movement of peoples, resources and goods across long distances, which sustained national economies and international trading partners” (Miller, p.186). People began to move toward a life based on the “context of individualized social action in which ties between people are rational and calculated, as opposed to natural and emotional” (Miller, 185). Communities were now identified as Gesellschaft communities. However, as time has continued, these communities have changed into networks, that ultimately would create a conundrum of security issues in a world of networks.

Living in a time where many individuals live in their own personally chosen communities, we can say that we live in a networked society. Since we have become so individualized in our social lives, we can say, “community is not an accurate term to describe the current state of social relations in contemporary post-industrial societies” (Miller, 197). Based on the transition from a Fordism economic model to one based on customization, “the economic pressure to change the spatial order of industrial production and consumption”, and the “development of a worldwide communication infrastructure and digital networks has all allowed for the decentralization of firms” and in turn has allowed a global scale of production, distribution, and consumption” (Miller, 198). These economics trickled their way down into network sociality, which shows the contrasts in the belonging to a community in regards to integration and disintegration within a network. Network society essentially undermines “the basis for community by emphasizing the instrumental of diverse, wide ranging and individual network connections to others over strong, long-lasting relationships and communities. This correlates directly to social networking websites and leads the notion of networked individualism.

Before networked individualism, Wellman referred to societies acting as “little boxes” where people would communicate within certain isolated areas. This led to glocalization, when a shift occurred away from these isolated communities to more urban and modern contexts. This meant that communication could be had between two points that were distant, but still maintained a sense of place. After place was established, it was all about individuals establishing themselves within these places. Place deteriorated thanks to technologies allowing wireless interaction; mobiles devices, tablets, laptops. The preference was placed on person-to-person interactions now. What is interesting about this is that shifting to “networked individualism means that relationships become increasingly specialized” (Miller, p. 199). People play a particular role in the other’s life, as to act as a certain instrument. This in turn points to the fact that “networks have a goal, a point, project, or purpose for their existence” (Miller, p. 199).

This goal is reached in part due to the features of a network. A network is a-spatial (based on connectivity versus geographical proximity), people are free to connect with whom they please, networks exist for certain purpose (instrumentally), each member brings something to the network, and networks have infinite ability as to how large and expansive they can be. Thanks to technology, the person-to-person contact is able to be accomplished thanks the ability to be constantly contactable, no matter the geographic location. However, the ability to be present or absent in the online world means that relationships become webs of, as Licoppe calls it, quasi-continuous exchanges. Using social network websites means people are easily contactable through means of likes, comments, messages, texts, photos, or status updates. These are becoming the new methods of communication in order for people to keep up with one another. “Culture and community are maintained through conversation and communication” (Miller, p. 203). These functions literally show how users are able to acknowledge the presence of another through what is being communicated within the social network. This in turn means that communication is turning phatic, or does not “exchange and meaningful information or facts about the world” (Miller, p. 203). All it is used for is to maintain connections. “The concept of the network has been put forward as a reasonable way to view attachments and social organization in the late-modern world of mobility and digital communications” (Miller, p 205). However, in order for networks to operate correctly, users must provide personal information.

This leads to the idea of networks obtaining too much information that can eventually become useful to advertisers and other firms, or be used against you. We create profiles to join these networks, free. The networks know that we are really paying in the form of our own personal information, which can possibly be worth quite a bit of money when sold to advertisers. It is scary to envision the idea that so much of our personal information can be accumulated from various networks and placed into a single bundle that encompasses most of who we are, what we do, and where we go on the Internet. As Perri says, “privacy will shift towards confidentiality” (p. 114). In addition, this is actually becoming true. Networks make all information available to others with default settings. People now have to opt out of presenting particular information to people in the online realm. Cookies attach themselves to our computers to authenticate our identities every time we log into specific websites. Search Engines store the data that we search and our IP addresses.

It is for certain that the evolution of our communities from isolated villages to now a global village with networked individualism has led to this mass collection of data by corporations and the Government. Personally, I find it a bit intrusive. Essentially, we are all being sold items of ourselves thanks to the data that is collected on each one of us networked individuals. I believe that there needs to be a change, and that our privacy is our business. We deserve the right to have access to our own information that is currently online and we have the right to be anonymous in this online world where we can roam into networks of our choosing without having to worry about what our private information is going to be used for.