How the data is signaling a shift in authority over our lives
The past signals were about how the data from all walks of life have changed our lives and have made decision making for us way simpler than it was used to be. In this final article, I want to argue about the implications that could happen in the future as our reliance on data increases day by day.
As our dependence on the mobile phone applications and internet is increasing at an unprecedented rate, it signals a shift in authority from ourselves to the data over our decision making. From the middle ages to the starting of industrial revolution, people relied on religious texts and rules for making decisions in their lives. From every mundane decisions to the decision of whom to marry, people looked into scriptures for answers. In the 20th century, the idea of liberalism grew and the authority over our decision making shifted to ourselves.Today, most people do not look into religion for deciding what to eat and whom to marry in their lives. They just do what they ‘feel’ what is right for them. Now as the age of information technology is rising with companies having huge amount of our data with them, we are seeing an age where the decision making about our lives is shifting to the algorithms which are tuned by our personal data. People are now trusting algorithms that uses machine learning to make choices of eating, where to travel or even whom to date. This signals yet another change of authority over our lives, changing from the age to liberalism to the age of data.
This raises an important question over whether how much authority these algorithms should have over ourselves. Since many big companies have now started having our personal data, the situation can become much more dangerous when say, one of these companies could have a hidden agenda of theirs to control our lives via our data. Or, say, some dystopian government like get access to our data and start manipulating us. From a policy making point of view, we should be careful over what we are sharing and whom we are sharing the data. We should examine if the policy we are drafting is not catering to a particular set of people or if the data we are using to implement it is not taking too much personal choices for people. New laws and regulations should be in place to control the companies over access to our data.
