Anyone who has ever watched a movie or television knows that classic scene where a character poses the question “Does it feel like we’re being watched?” to another character. Now, many Americans in today’s society are asking the same exact question about their own lives. In the 21st century, modern technology has made it so that governments, businesses, scientists and researchers can do just that: watch our lives with clusters of what is called “Big Data.” Big data is commonly seen as the digital storage of large quantities of information (CQ researcher, 909). Big data can be anything, from a person’s Facebook content to their email address; any personal information about someone can be considered big data (909). The question, then, is how the data is used and what are the benefits and negatives of the access that entities have to this big data.
Big data is digital storage of large quantities of information and it comes in many different forms. It can be a person’s information from social media, their phone calls and records, emails, bank statements and any other personal information they may have including credit card numbers (912). This information is most often found within email, social media and search engines (912). Additionally, government organizations like the National Security Administration (NSA) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) collect much of this big data; in one instance, the DEA demanded phone records of AT&T customers (912). Computers designated for big data can look further past structure to look at less structured data like Facebook information, camera images, search engine searches and what customers look at at online retail stores like Amazon.com (912). Much of the big data that is stored com...
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...n a way that helps to identify trading that may be illegal; the utilization of this data led to close to 300 investigations by July 2013 (915).
There is no doubt that big data is a hugely controversial topic in today’s society. Businesses, scientists, and even the government use big data on a daily basis, from finding new ways to strengthen the economy to improving medicine to tracking terrorists. With that, however, comes the belief that people are losing their privacy and the loss of trust in the government as well as other disadvantages such as worse credit scores and whether or not someone gets a job or a loan. Like many things in life, big data has both its advantages and disadvantages. The question still remains, then: is big data more beneficial than it is harmful?
Works Cited
"Big Data and Privacy." CQ Researcher 23.38 (2013): 909-932. Web. Feb 2014.
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With the recent innovations of technology, there are plenty of those who correlate such advancements to the dystopian society from George Orwell’s novel 1984. In it, the totalitarian government has complete control and surveillance of all it’s citizens, so much so that they are capable of manipulating and reading their thoughts. As the venues for surveillance increase in number, more and more people fear of the government abusing them for tracking them. Although this is a totally valid concern, the simple truth is that these innovative advancements in technology not only do not bring society closer to the world of “Big Brother”, but that it is taking society farther away from it.
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Have you ever felt violated? Like somebody knew too much about you that they didn’t need to know? Or have you ever felt like someone was watching you? As if somebody knew your every move? Most people don’t normally feel this way; most people feel safe in their general surroundings. Although with the constant use of technology in today’s era, it’s time to ask: Should we, as American citizens, feel as safe as we do?
Are the benefits of electronic communication at the expense of our privacy? How does the Internet affect the availability and use of our personal information? The Internet brings another dimension to the issue of privacy. Whether you are voting on-line or buying a book from Amazon.com you must consider how much personal information has been collected about you, with or without your consent, and how it can be used. Policies governing privacy on the Internet are still not clearly defined and many on-line users do not understand how the information they provide will be used. How much...
As technology penetrates society through Internet sites, smartphones, social networks, and other modes of technology, questions are raised as the whether lines are being crossed. People spend a vast majority of their time spreading information about themselves and others through these various types of technology. The problem with all these variations is that there is no effective way of knowing what information is being collected and how it is used. The users of this revolutionary technology cannot control the fate of this information, but can only control their choice of releasing information into the cyber world. There is no denying that as technology becomes more and more integrated into one’s life, so does the sacrificing of that person’s privacy into the cyber world. The question being raised is today’s technology depleting the level of privacy that each member of society have? In today’s society technology has reduced our privacy due to the amount of personal information released on social networks, smartphones, and street view mapping by Google. All three of these aspects include societies tendency to provide other technology users with information about daily occurrences. The information that will be provided in this paper deals with assessing how technology impacts our privacy.
Big data is a concept that has been misunderstood therefore I will be writing this paper with the intentions of thoroughly discussing this technological concept and all its dimensions with regard to what constitutes big data and how the term came about. The rapid innovations in Information Technology have brought about the realisation of big data. The concept of big data is complex and has different connotations but I intend to clarify its functions. Big data refers to the concept of a collection of large and complex amounts of data that are found extremely difficult to notate or even process by most on-hand devices and database technologies.