When we are raw material for US
I wake up, turn my computer on and log in my Facebook account. Besides the new friendship invitations, there is a list of my personal interests posted on my wall. I’m quite used to it because my friends have similar interests too, the creepy thing is that they suggest accepting the invitation of some friends of which many of them I don’t know. When I’m in, Google ready to search data for my job, predictable words, sometimes sentences, appear in the searching box. No doubt about it, Google and guys at Silicon Valley know all I like and preferences.
How do they know that? Are they Nostradamus? No dear users, when we register in any social network we offer freely a lot of personal information that is stored in a big server of the cloud and big companies like Alphabet, Netflix and other ones use it to get incomes. The funny thing is that we are giving them the raw material to be billionaires companies. Why? The data that we deliver for free is sold to advertisement companies as well as to Apple, Sony, Mercedes and so on.
What I am telling is not a fairy tale or a George Orwell novel, it’s real and it has a name: Big data. For a bigger surprise, Donald Trump’s campaign team for 2016 elections hired a company expert on analyzing that turns the entire provider info into a reverted final product, manipulating and assertively seducing us to determinate ways of thinking. The analysis of Big Data has become in an attractive business hired by important companies to analyze and know the behavior of their customers and possible potential clients. So is not a science fiction that US president benefited from the tech industry. Sadly, there is not a public awareness of how techs companies can manage our lives.
It is not weird that security flaws are becoming quite common in the tech industry, some experts said the purpose is it to prevent espionage or a terrorist attack, but they use it as well to have client characterizations. Big data is increasing its contribution to global economy. Currently, big data enterprises are generating more money than big manufactories or insurance companies because we are not living the Industrial era, but the Information era where facts are priceless if well analyzed. Then every single business that wants to succeed needs big data, a role played quite well by Google and Facebook.
Marc Andreessen, Silicon Valley’s investor, says once a “digitization capitalism starts to eat reality itself”. Every day every single life becomes a share for a company, they start to consume moments. We are the essential material for digital industry. The alarming part is that we enjoy it so much we don’t realize how we make Facebook, Netflix, Google and so on, to increase their billions. Every social network log-in means personal data and money when the fair thing is they should pay us.
But big data has a dark side too; their owners can spy on us, for instance, the Russian interference on 2016 elections and the Intel chips hacking due to security flaws. People can only see the tip of the iceberg but the danger is quite bigger. Actually, one of the theories is that the indicted Russians used data of many users of social networks to infiltrate and spread messages to collude in Donald Trump’s favor. It’s not a mystery why that Senate and Congress are asking for more money to reinforce cybersecurity, and why Trump has warned several times that America must be ready for a Digital War. We are the owners of our information and data; we have to use it carefully. It’s a wealth in our hands but is also a powerful weapon that can be used against us and our country.