Your Personal World: How much they already know

One of my assigned readings is this book, The Filter Bubble,  by Eli Pariser. Pariser a board member and former executive at MoveOne.org, and a leader in internet politics, explains in great detail through his book how much information we give up when we go on the internet. He talks about the privacy we don't have and about what corporations like Google and Facebook can do with the information we give them by simply logging on.

In this blog post, I want to focus on what exactly that information is. What do they know about us? How do they figure it all out? What are our rights as users? I know that I want to know exactly what I am allowing to be shared about me when I get on the internet.

According to Pariser, just location can now tell corporations a wealth of knowledge about us. He gave the example that he travels frequently from New York City to San Francisco. Not only can this tell whoever is watching what local sites or places to advertise, but can probably predict fairly accurately his political standing and occupation. Another means of using location would be to use the information of those around you. By using the information provided by your neighbors, your age, race, and economic class can be predicted with frightening accuracy.

Google uses this information and much more in a system called PageRank, a set of algorithms created by a team at Stanford, in order to determine which of the millions of search results will be the most pertinent to us personally. It takes into account, for example, the fact that I am an avid follower of fashion and make-up recourses such as Vogue and Marie Claire, so when I type in Mac in my search bar, the cosmetics company pops up first as opposed to the Apple company.

Turns out, we as users don't have much say in how our information is used. Google's Privacy Policy, though easy to understand and fairly transparent to the untrained eye, really gives no option to the user. In exchange for their product, they expect full use of any information the user can give all in the name of "improving the experience"for the user. The user was never asked if they wanted the experience improved. Or to what extent they would be willing to go to have it changed.

The goal of Google is to create a search engine that can practically predict the question before it is asked. According to Google founder, Larry Page, "We want to create the ultimate search engine that can understand anything...Some people could call that artificial intelligence." The arguments for and against the super-searcher are extensive and not the point of this post, but I want to pose the question, do you want a search engine that can answer anything? Do you think that a search engine that can answer hypothetical questions is worth the chaos they would inevitable create? Do we have a say at all?

Sarah Martin