Social Media And Our Future Digital DNA
Darryl Jelley
In today’s digital age we are creating historic archives of our lives forever through every interaction we make in today’s social experiment we call life. Today our lives are tracked, traced, recorded and stored for some greater purpose. My intention is to show how our social media culture is contributing to an evolution of our collective conscious and ourselves. This collective conscious will lead to a shared belief in ideas and moral attitudes, which operate as a unifying force within society. While this could be the next phase of our humanity it can have some adverse effects.
There are many lessons in human nature learned from our past, while social media stands for a collective force for good it could turn to out to have adverse effects. This effect is likened to a Lord of the Flies outcome. Socialism, Communism, Meritocracy, Ochlocracy, Technocracy, and Ethnocracy are examples of past movements that culture adverse reaction to.
In 1954 Author William Golding wrote, The Lord of the Flies, a fictional novel about a group of schoolboys marooned on a tropical island after their plane is shot down during world war two. The story explores the danger of an unregulated society and how fast it can slip into chaos. The boys on the island splinter into factions, some behave peacefully and work together to maintain order and achieve common goals, while others rebel and seek only anarchy and violence. (Shmoop 2008, November 11) Golding paints a broader portrait of the fundamental human struggle between good instinct—the impulse to obey rules, behave morally, and act lawfully—and the bad instinct—the impulse to seek power over others, act selfishly, scorn moral rules.
In this paper I will be citing many examples to support the need to ask four major questions, where is all the information going, who is using the information and is it regulated, and who owns your information and what can be done with this information.
First the reason I chose this topic is not to find an answer but to suggest we ask the questions. We have the most powerful tool known to mankind, a network of information free to all and growing, it’s fed by our insatiable appetite for knowledge and our curiosity. Today we all live in the digital era, and I think it’s safe to say there really is no going back unless the planet ceases to exist. 40% of the world’s population has an Internet connection. In 1995 it was less than 1%. The number of Internet users has increased tenfold from 1999 to 2013. As of 2014 about 3 billion are actively feeding the Internet.
Some users may see Pandora's box while others see the magic genie in a box, any answer you need is there. Today, almost every interaction is set in the digital realm, we work, go to school, we shop, listen, play, date, sell, bank, map, plan, store, radio, movies, face time, call, cloud compute, and connect to things we never imaged. We can watch our kids, pets and home all from our computers. Every day things happen on the web that impact our lives which we never know about, power, water, gas, electricity transportation, payment systems, telephony services, farming, shopping, street cams, and so much more.
So the first of four questions to explore is where is all the information going? Your personal information is being stored and delivered to massive data farms. Some of the biggest are government owned, the giant server farms hold, tax records, government records, military records, banking records, top secret records and public records. The government is charged with preserving and documenting government and historical records, which comprise the National Archives, Military Archives. There are thousands upon thousands of top secret server farms set up for the NSA, FBI, CIA, IRS, DHS, DOD, spying programs and national intelligence.
Then there are the public and private companies with server farms, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Rackspace, Intel, eBay, Yahoo, Go-Daddy, Apple, IBM, are some of the biggest. (| Data Center Knowledge. Retrieved November 9, 2014) Google has some of the public servers, which handle a large majority of the indexed visible web. Google sets up severs worldwide and has server farms in America, Asia, Europe, Finland, Belgium, and Ireland. (Google. (n.d.). Retrieved November 9, 2014)
These server farms transfer and control what we call the visible web this is part of the Internet that is indexed by bots and spiders. Bots and spidering software works when content is indexed and with updated web content.
The other place where your information is stored is in the deep net. This is a place that is not indexed and spidering software can’t penetrate. It is impossible to measure the size of the deep net because the majority of the information is locked inside databases (Deep Web. (n.d.). Retrieved November 9, 2014). Estimates suggested that the deep net is 4,000 to 5,000 times larger than the surface web. However, since more information and sites are always being added, it can be assumed that the deep web is growing exponentially at a rate that cannot be quantified. Estimates speculate that the deep web consists of about 7.5 petabytes. The deep web contains nearly 550 billion individual documents compared to the one billion of the surface Web. (Deep Web. (n.d.). Retrieved November 9, 2014)
So think about all the information stored about an individual. Every interaction, be it web traffic, phone app, credit card, hospital visit, plane ticket, social post, email, search engine query is stored somewhere, forever. This is amazing and scary, just think of the massive push in the nineties to put everything on the web, an almost go west young man mentality many people never thought of the ramifications. The Internet was billed as the future of business and we all need to be on the web.
Up until the nineties public information was somewhat controlled. Your personal information control had been eroding at a slow rate but you still could be somewhat invisible and maintain some sense of privacy followed.
Who now is using the information and is it regulated? That question has so many layers. Based on what type of interaction you are having on the Internet. It can range from what sites your visiting to your social posting and sharing, it can be based on downloads, buying habits, likes and dislikes. Just about any and ever interaction on the web is measured, monitored, sifted, sorted, categorized and reported. Growing up I was told if you have something you don’t want others to know than don’t write it down. These sounds like good advice on the web until you have to fill out a medical form, online bank statement or opening a simple Facebook account, then you hope the company or individual will be good steward with you information.
This brings us to the third question of who owns your information? The value of the Internet lies in its content. This one simple truth leads us to whoever controls the Internet will have the power to control our culture can lead us down a treacherous path to a cognitive dead-ends that are counterintuitive to our freedoms. Net neutrality is becoming harder and harder to fight for a level playing field as your information makes its way to data warehouses without a user's knowledge or consent.
When I was starting out in advertising there was a science known as direct marketing, this was extremely cutting edge. The fascinating part of direct marketing was the ability to deliver different messages to people based on their salary or year of birth. This was used in some unique and interesting ways, one way would be to deliver the same magazine on the same street with two different car ads, this was done based on the readers yearly salary.
In our digital world it is so easy to gather information on your online behavior by interacting with some form of technology your leaving a digital footprint. The more you use technology in every aspect of your life, the easier it is to track and gather intelligence. It’s totally legal and you have no recourse if you want to exist in today's digital world, yes you can limit or muddy the information gathered on you but you are fighting a up hill battle. (Facebook & Your Privacy: Why It Matters. (n.d.). Retrieved November 9, 2014) Today as we interact and rely heavily on the Internet for services, goods, entertainment, and social interactions we are creating vast historic archives of our lives forever.
Imagine if you will a future where your grandchildren are doing a homework assignment for a social science project, the project; go back in time and study what it was like for you as a teen when you got your first job after college. Because your social interactions have been achieved they can see photos of you celebrating with friends, family and kissing a special girl, (who turned out to be your grandmother) you can read funny comments of joyous congratulations and happiness. This would be an example of the good use the internet can achieve. Now lets see the not so good side. Your grandchild is applying for a loan and the bank pulls an analytical report of archived payment behaviors in the family. While this has nothing to do with your grandchild it could be used to predict a risk percent rating.
The examples are purely fantastical and so was Socialism, Communism, Meritocracy, Ochlocracy, Technocracy, and Ethnocracy by men with imaginations and egos that were left unchecked. The future of our digital DNA or digital footprint is at a precipice, with digital innovation and unreguatated digital technologies taking flight its hard for governing body’s to regulate and that slowness to move could leave major gaps for information to take on forms never imagined (Data center locations Data Centers, Google. (n.d.). Retrieved November 9, 2014.Some examples are mass credit card breaches by some of the largest retailer and unregulated information gathering from companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook.
Facebook has more than 600 millions of users and it’s the biggest social networking site by far. Millions check in every day, readily updating their statuses and checking out updates of friends and family. People use Facebook to pass current events in real time.
Facebook has been busily working on perfecting a tool called Humanatree, a family tree service that allows uses to build, connect, trace, and track family members. Facebook has so much data on its uses and owns the connection paths that this seems a logical step in developing the next phases of social networking, but what’s the price down the line? (Facebook & Your Privacy: Why It Matters. (n.d.). Retrieved November 9, 2014)
There is no regulation in sight, could this be the next step in eliminating public records? Could Facebook manage them better than your local city or town office? Is this some master plan to sell services to local municipalities? Sounds kind of fantastical, but other companies are also moving in this direction Google is moving to a connective living model this is a world in which our homes, work, and city are all seamlessly connected through multiple intelligent devices that integrate video, voice, and data services to provide access and ubiquitous connectivity anytime and anywhere.
Looking at the questions of what can be done with this information really is really to big to know but it brings home the reality that our future really depends on our ability to control our digital footprint to understand and regulate our digital DNA so that we don’t find ourselves losing our freedoms.
We pride ourselves on the freedoms we enjoy as a democracy and as it is our fundamental human right to evolve our technology so that we can evolve, hopefully we can learn from our past attempts as a utopian society and know it’s within all of us not to trade digital convenience for our humanity and freedoms.
Illustration by Francesca_Bifulco
Getting Lost in the Crowd
Getting Lost in the Crowd
Getting Lost in the Crowd. (n.d.). Retrieved November 10, 2014. From, http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/francesca-bifulco-in-the-crowd
Deep Web. (n.d.). Retrieved November 9, 2014 From
Data center locations Data Centers, Google. (n.d.). Retrieved November 9, 2014.From, http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/inside/locations/
Who Has the Most Web Servers? | Data Center Knowledge. (n.d.). Retrieved November 9, 2014. From, http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/05/14/whos-got-the-most-web-servers
Connected Living: The Next Big Thing After Facebook. (n.d.). Retrieved November 9, 2014. From, http://www.forbes.com/sites/sarwantsingh/2014/02/12/connected-living-the-next-big-thing-after-facebook
Shmoop Editorial Team. (2008, November 11). Lord of the Flies Summary. Retrieved November 10, 2014.From http://www.shmoop.com/lord-of-the-flies/summary.html
Facebook & Your Privacy: Why It Matters. (n.d.). Retrieved November 9, 2014. From
Facebook & Your Privacy: Why It Matters. (n.d.). Retrieved November 9, 2014. From
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/facebook-privacy-matters
Felix, S. (2012, September 9). This Is How Facebook Is Tracking Your Internet Activity. Business Insider. Retrieved August 4, 2014, from http://www. businessinsider.com /this-is-how-facebook-is-tracking-your-internet-activity-2012-9?op=1
Felix, S. (2012, September 9). This Is How Facebook Is Tracking Your Internet Activity. Business Insider. Retrieved August 4, 2014, from http://www. businessinsider.com /this-is-how-facebook-is-tracking-your-internet-activity-2012-9?op=1
Cohen, N. (2011, March 25). It's Tracking Your Every Move, And You May Not Even Know. Retrieved August 7, 2014. From http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/ business/media/26privacy.html
Reputation: You Can't Run from Your Shadow. (n.d.). Retrieved October 6, 2014. From http://www.franksonnenbergonline.com/blog/you-cant-run-from-your-shadow/
Exclusive: Google, CIA Invest in ‘Future’ of Web Monitoring | Danger Room | WIRED. (10, July 26). Retrieved August 8, 2014. From http://www.wired.com/2010/07 /exclusive-google cia/http://www.wired.com/2010/07/exclusive-google-cia/
How to disappear from the Internet forever - NBC News. (n.d.). Retrieved August 8, 2014. From http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/how-disappear-internet-forever-f1C6983976
Hu, X. (2006, June 6). International Journal of Data Mining and Bioinformatics (IJDMB). Retrieved August 8, 2014. From http://www.library.georgetown.edu /newjour/publication/international-journal-data-mining-and-bioinformatics-ijdmb
What Facebook Knows | MIT Technology Review. (n.d.). Retrieved October 6, 2014. From http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/428150/what-facebook-knows/
No comments:
Post a Comment