How convenient
When Karl Benz developed a ‘productionised’ petrol powered vehicle in 1886 it’s doubtful he could have envisaged where that invention would lead — how the car would come to shape and define our lives.
By the time Henry Ford developed his assembly line for mass production, the impact of the the car on American life was starting to be felt. By the end of WW1 the black Model T was ubiquitous in almost every city in North America. As the Cold War unfolded in the decade and a half after World War II, the United States experienced phenomenal economic growth. The automobile industry was partially responsible, as the number of automobiles produced annually quadrupled between 1946 and 1955. More and more people were mobile, the introduction of the mass-produced car represented a revolution in mobility and convenience. The development of the car has contributed to changes in employment distribution, shopping patterns, social interactions, manufacturing priorities and city planning. As people became more mobile, vast highway systems were built, before long the personal motor vehicle, and our reliance on it, had changed the way we live.
In 2016 car and technology stories are all about driver-less or autonomous vehicles.
behind the scenes three groups — technology giants such as Uber, carmakers and a whole fleet of autoparts suppliers — are in a tight race. Each is vying to develop the hardware and software that make up the complex guts of a self-driving vehicle.
(The Economist, Sept 24 2016 Who’s self-driving your car?)
But even before the advent of driverless technology, we have seen a massive increase in vehicle-tech.
Car companies are finally realising that what they sell is just a big computer you sit in
(The Guardian, Aug 28 2016, Car hacking is the future — and sooner or later you’ll be hit)
As with many internet enabled devices, security of vehicle systems has been an issue. Hackers have been able to exploit software flaws to completely disable a vehicle or seize control of it by cutting the brakes and transmission. (The Guardian, Aug 28 2016, Car hacking is the future — and sooner or later you’ll be hit)
But having your car hacked is perhaps the least of your issues. In the US 90% of new cars have a black box (Event Data Recorder) that records speed, how far the accelerator pedal is pressed, occupant size and seat positions, whether brake is applied, seat-belt usage and in some cases, driver’s steering input. This data can help convict unsafe drivers and improve safety. But what if your insurance company wants to access it before they settle a claim? Is that fair if we can’t easily opt-out or turn off the feature? What if the data collection is aggregated with other data and now other deeper inferences can be drawn like your propensity for recklessness, impulsiveness, anger? Should your bank be able to deny your mortgage because you are judged a reckless driver (and therefore a bad credit risk) or should your potential employer be able to factor in a report on your driving before deciding to give you a job? This creates the possibility of new forms of racial, gender or economic discrimination (Peppet, 2014).
“Currently, discrimination, privacy, security and consumer welfare law are all unprepared to handle the legal implications of these new technologies”
(Peppet, S., 2014, pg. 148)
In the race for goods and services that provide us with the ultimate convenience we are giving away more and more of our personal data. As we saw in my previous blog Is all that Data making you fat? We are lacking the ability to respond to marketers’ unfair or deceptive information collection and use practices (Kshetri, 2014).
Whilst data security should always be a concern. How our data is used and by whom is arguably of even greater concern.
At the beginning of this series of blogs I postulated that Data is the new global commodity. As the global trade in goods slows, our digitised lives are devouring more broadband than ever before imagined (McKinsey 2016). Our devices and everyday lives are predicated on data collection and aggregation (smartphones, cars, homes, electric systems, health-care devices, fitness monitors and workplaces — Peppet, 2014).
Our raw personal data has value and is eagerly sought by the global players, so much so that they aggressively hunt it in yet to be conquered markets such as India (Kuchler, 2016). Technological innovations such as cloud computing, faster data transmission, more data collection points have led to a situation where data is now king. Its desirability can no longer be underestimated.
Having obtained the raw materials, data is now in an industrialised phase where is is re-formed and re-shaped into different types of products and services. The more services we consume, the more data we create and the convenience data feedback loop continues to feed on itself. From predictive marketing (targeted to the specific individual), to beacon technology to Pokémon lures, our data is being harvested and transformed. In the case of platform providers such as Google and Facebook data is the competitive asset. In these multi-sided markets users provide data about themselves and the platform providers create or obtain data by means of analysing the behaviour and habits of users on their platform (Graef, 2015).
In order to thrive and survive in this new reality we need to make clear what our expectations are. Both as members of democratic societies and as consumers of goods and services. Lengthy Ts & Cs which we never read and rarely comprehend are fairly useless. But if we continue to want more convenience at our finger tips then we need to start demanding that it doesn’t come at such a high cost to our privacy. But before we can take this step, we need to be better informed. We need to understand how our detailed, sensitive and revealing data is used. How valuable it is in its raw form, how it can be aggregated, how it rarely remains un-identifiable.
Data is the new commodity. Once we understand its value, we can be clearer in our expectations and demands for how it is treated.
Readings
Graef, I., Wahyuningtyas, Y., and Valcke, P., (2015). Assessing data access issues in online platforms. Telecommunications Policy, 39(5), 375–387.
Kshetri, N. (2014). Big data ׳s impact on privacy, security and consumer welfare. Telecommunications Policy, 38(11), 1134–1145.
Kuchler, Hannah (2016), Facebook, Google and the rice to sign up India (2016), Financial Times, 18 March.
McKinsey Global Institute (2016), Digital Globalization: The New Era Of Global Flows.
Peppet, S. R. (2014). Regulating the internet of things: First steps toward managing discrimination, privacy, security, and consent. Texas Law Review, 93(1), 85–176.
