Response: Digitize Everything

I think that this article is a fantastic introduction into data and the information age, where statistics and data can allow us to live more “efficient” lives through its processing by computers. When I read this article, I thought “this is fantastic that Waze is able to analyze traffic routes and Siri can dig through databases of information and users’ sound recordings,” but when data is used to create things more convenient for us, make us live more efficient lives, we are also giving this network data about ourselves. I think that this chapter, and I do recognize that this is a chapter of a book and probably does not discuss everything the whole book does, is not able to show that this is a double-edged sword, that there is a huge risk involved in providing this data that makes the auto-entry Gmail emails of today possible. I greatly appreciated reading this chapters because it provided statistics and examples that seemed objective in its analysis of how technology and data are utilized today. Oftentimes, most of what I read about the implications of data and technology are either completely against technology or completely confident that we can be living in a utopia because of all of this information and the proper technology used to process it. But this chapters focus on statistics of how data is being used and how much data is present, which was a welcome change from the often extreme viewpoints I see in the media.

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