Data mining - an expendable resource?

As someone who is very anti social network sites for the very fact that I don't want to have my life on the internet, I felt foolish hearing Ian Brown talk about Google's data mining, in particular Gmail - which I actively hold an account with. I instantly had thoughts of getting rid of my account... But was unsure in this age of cloud computing if there were any free email systems that didn't mine data?

In our consumer society it is always important to try and stay aware of what is going on behind the scenes of corporate superpowers, but what was previously cheap labor in third world countries (and still is), in today's world of digital capitalism it is much harder to see the inner workings of the digital superpowers. As danah boyd showed in last weeks reading, privacy as well as social parameters are being redefined online and it seems that people are (slowly) becoming aware of this.

Data mining on the internet has a lot of concern surrounding potential consequences, but it seems as if these are building up to real threats of privacy and this growing consciousness is gaining more focus across the board as who the miners are comes to light. Interestingly, the supposed "Google killer" search engine Cuil, launched last year by ex-Google employees, does not collect user search data or IP addresses, however this quite admirable fact has not helped them, with a decreasing rank of 12,000 in terms of traffic in August this year.

As digital superpowers such as Google attempt to create an all encompassing digital empire and push the boundaries of mapping and controlling data on the net, it is important to stay stay alert: who is watching us online? Is my online activity going to affect me later on? And what I think is imperative, should we be preempting the risks presented by such comprehensive and invasive digital data mining?

1 comments:

    "Insert name here": Ian Brown (not the former Stone Roses frontman) of the Open Rights Group. The full documentary can be accessed here:
    http://www.archive.org/details/Google-Documentary_GameHacked.com