The Data Revolution #4: The Dark Side of Data

Data Pitfalls, Activism, and Portability

The rise of data's importance in our lives isn't a slam dunk, feel good story. There are pitfalls and drawbacks that can turn our data-driven dreams into nagging nightmares. At the same time, big data brings with it big implications, from privacy issues to ownership. Ownership leads to the question of portability: if our data truly is ours, then why can't we take it where we want it to go?

"The Data Revolution Series" delves into the issues and intricacies of our increasingly data-driven lives, from tracking our everyday behaviour to contributing data points for the social good. Based on insights and commentary from technology journalist Nora Young's (@nora3000) first book, "The Virtual Self: How our Digital Lives are Altering the World Around Us", we'll take a look at the pros and cons of the changing data landscape. This fourth and final post in this series will delve into the dark side of data.

The Pitfalls of a Data Driven Life

Throughout the narrative of "The Virtual Self", Young makes sure to plant several seeds of dystopian doubt. "This boom in data," she warns, "is, in equal measure, both valuable and fraught with pitfalls." What kind of pitfalls? For one, a loss of joy when living a life that is ruled by numbers. "From the outside, though, you can’t help but feel that there’s a relentlessly joyless quality to this sort of self-tracking," Young admits. "Sources of bodily delight and physical expressiveness, such as running or eating a meal, are reduced to stats-driven, objectified activities." She warns, "We become a self that is comprised of statistical information. Data is seductive, because numbers are definite. Meaning, however, can be much more slippery.”

Part of what might cause this loss of joy is the feeling that we are not agents, but rather objects in our own cruel experiment. In many ways, self-tracking forces us to "think of your body as a site of observation and experimentation," which causes us to "think of your daily activities like this too." Young's own account of her feelings puts it bluntly: "In turning my daily work into a series of goals to be met and activities to be charted, it made me feel like a hamster on a wheel, and also, in some sense an object, rather than a subject, in my own life. The risk," Young postures, "is that we objectify the body, and thereby make a thing of ourselves."

Finally, a data-driven life can potentially remove our penchant for leisure, and destroy our sense of being present in the here and now. "With the advent of self-tracking, we increasingly feel compelled to give a reckoning of how we are spending every minute," Young says. "If you are determined to be fitter or more productive, at what point do the numbers and graphs tell you to relax and have some French fries?" In the same sense, self-tracking can give us the feeling of being absent: "Digital technology takes us out of being where we are. It creates this other sense of non-physical space. The challenge with this digital way of being...is that it prevents us from being truly present. We are not attending to body, perception, and experience."

Societal Risks and the Need for Data Activism

In addition to the risks to our own individual well-being, the Collective Data Map presents risks to the well-being of society as a whole. The sensors that must permeate the physical world in order to track and collect our data can very quickly give way to surveillance. Jamais Cascio’s term for this world of constant self-observation: the Participatory Panopticon. Accoding to Young, he suggests that we would "use this monitoring to witness and share not just what we are doing but what others are doing, from monitoring police at demonstrations to calling up the exact words our spouse used on a particular occasion." At what point does data gathering become an invasion of our privacy?

Other issues abound. Will we be able to choose which data we contribute? "The line between the data we are actively choosing to make available and the data we are generating passively is blurring," warns Young. How will we regulate sensors that track things automatically? “Corporate Data Responsibility” is a term that Young argues will become more common as consumers become more concerned about how their data is being used. What rules will govern this new, dynamic data ecosystem? "How that information is stored, and who has access to it, has powerful, and even potentially dangerous, implications," says Young.

Young argues that, since the idea of Big Data is in its early stages, we still have the power to shape and govern how it will impact us. We need to be data activists, she argues, progressive and proactive about how our data will shape our own future. "Will we use [our data] for personal insight, and to build smarter, more sustainable communities, or will we use it for control, surveillance, and profit?" Referring to Facebook, she warns that "The degree of power it confers on a single company—a company with an active interest in collecting as much of our data as possible—is troubling." As Data Activists, we must retain the power to keep these companies in check.

Data Portability and its Rightful Home

Finally, this brings us to the issue of data ownership, and our right to move our data around as we see fit. Do we own it forever? Think about it: the companies that store and manage our Virtual Selves aren't necessarily going to be in business forever. Our virtual identities, then, are fallible. "Whole chunks of your logged life—all those photos you put on Flickr, the record of the places you checked into on Foursquare—could disappear one day," Young warns.

"Data portability", she explains, is all about our ability to pick up our data and take it elsewhere if we wanted to. The technical protocols should exist so that we "can easily move all of [our] information from one service to another. You will need to be the bearer of your data, and for it to be used effectively, you will need to get at it, move it, and recontextualize it in ways that suit your needs." It should be easy! Elias Bizannes of the DataPortability Project, draws an analogy to the financial system, which allows us to move our funds amongst banking institutions or different types of services.

Ultimately, the fight for the ownership and portability of our own data comes down to a fight for our rights. "We need to balance the business models of companies using our data, the social value of information, and most importantly, our rights," argued Young. We must "think of our data as something like our money, something we own by virtue of having generated it... [something that is] part of who we are as people, in the same way we think of our I.D. as a representation or documentation of who we are as individuals. The data we generate is then seen as a persistent, portable part of personal identity."


The final thought that I'll leave you with is that the debate that surrounds the Data Revolution is only just beginning. The more of us that's out there, the more intense the debate will be.

The Data Revolution #3: Big Data

How big data will drive our social, interconnected world

The data that we're producing from our obsession with self-tracking isn't just useful to ourselves. After all, no man is an island. The information about our daily lives impacts and influences our social network. Combined with data from the masses, it can also influence how the systems that we live in work. And when used and interpreted in the right context, our data can even change the world...

"The Data Revolution Series" delves into the issues and intricacies of our increasingly data-driven lives, from tracking our everyday behaviour to contributing data points for the social good. Based on insights and commentary from technology journalist Nora Young's (@nora3000) first book, "The Virtual Self: How our Digital Lives are Altering the World Around Us", we'll take a look at the pros and cons of the changing data landscape. This third post in the series will cover the impact of our data on people and our planet.

The Social Data Map

Our individual digital Data Maps aren't isolated from those around us. In fact, that couldn't be farther from the truth. The share-ability of our data, combined with the power and connections within our social network, means that our Data Maps are as social as ever. As Young puts it, "Our relationship to data has changed dramatically, and self-tracking has gone from being an individual, personal practice, shared only with confidants, to being one that is radically social. Social media has made us comfortable being public with personal information."

Not only has it become comfortable and natural to share our data with those in our social network, it has become insatiably rewarding, also. Every broadcast of our activities provides an opportunity for feedback and reinforcement from our peers. Think of the feeling when your friends "Like" your status updates on Facebook and when your tweets are retweeted on Twitter. "Being admired by others, getting attention from others, getting feedback from others, those things are endlessly rewarding." This feeling only makes us want to share our data more.

The Social Data Map isn't just about sharing our activities with others, of course. It's about having our friends activities shared with us, also. With everyone's data flowing back and forth within their social networks, we always have information on what our friends and connections are doing. "Social-media status updates,” Young writes, causes a 'ambient awareness'—"We are passively, peripherally aware of what out friends and acquaintances are up to."

The Collective Data Map

Moving beyond our social networks, the data that we produce has even more value when it's combined with that of everyone else. That's because looking at the data that is produced by a large number of individuals in aggregate can reveal insights about group behaviour, cities, and even society as a whole. This gives rise to the idea of the “collective”, what Young specifically refers to as the "emergent intelligence of the collective" and the "shared, collective experiences" that we have had. "Individual content, whether that’s status updates, opinions, distances run, or beverages consumed, can be aggregated, and used for purposes other than its original intent."

What kind of purposes? The kind that helps and informs society as a whole. Take Google Flu Trends, for example. Combining information about online searches for terms related to the flu with their location, Google can make a rough prediction of where flu outbreaks have happened, before they are reported. This Collective Data Map is "a constantly evolving, near real-time digital version of the world around us,” which provides us to shift and change our own behaviour for the betterment of society as a whole.

The information that the collective is generating in the digital realm can even influence the physical world. "With the addition of location-based information, we are turning our direct experience not just into data but into an actual map," Young writes, "a graphical representation of our actions and experiences.” Take real-time traffic data, for example. Google Maps can track traffic congestion and provide drivers with better routes while they're on the road. When this data is used to change and improve the efficiency of cities, it can transform the way we move about and experience the world around us.

Big Data, Big Issues

It isn't all clear as crystal, however. There are several issues that must be overcome before Big Data can truly bring about the "Data Revolution" that it's capable of. The first is the reliability of the Collective Data Map itself. Is the aggregate data that is currently being collected by those that are self-tracking truly representative of society as a whole? Is it a reliable way of making city-wide conclusions, or does it just reflect the activities and opinions of a small group of tech-savvy individuals?

Secondly, there is a tendency among many an amateur data analyst to look for correlations and patterns among the aggregate data that is available. But correlation, as the saying goes, isn't the cause. Patterns between different data sets often have no relation to each other, and since data is collected in isolation (and not as part of an experiment), it can be difficult to determine the cause of the patterns that we see. Without clearly establishing causation, big, city-changing decisions can be next to impossible to make.

Finally, there is the issue of objectivity. Many people will incorrectly assume that numbers equal objectivity. But data is always presented within a specific frame of reference, and that frame of reference is set by a human being. As Young laments, "Data purports to be objective, but it comes with a very human backdrop of assumptions. The risks," she observes, "are that we use the persuasive power of numbers as ideological tools." The Collective Data Map, in this sense, can be very dangerous.

This leads into the topic of my fourth and final post in "The Data Revolution Series", which will explore the downside of data—the pitfalls that we must avoid and the watch-outs that we must prepare for. Get ready!

The Data Revolution #2: Know Thyself

Why have consumers fallen in love with tracking their daily lives?

"Know thyself." The famous epigraph within the Temple of Apollo at Delphi was meant to warn those seeking guidance to look to themselves before interpreting the Greek god's prophecy of their future. But it may also explain the reason why self-tracking and the Quantified Self is becoming an emerging part of our culture. Human beings, quite simply, are obsessed with themselves, and our individual digital Data Maps might just hold the key to discovering our ideal, perfect selves...

"The Data Revolution Series" delves into the issues and intricacies of our increasingly data-driven lives, from tracking our everyday behaviour to contributing data points for the social good. Based on insights and commentary from technology journalist Nora Young's (@nora3000) first book, "The Virtual Self: How our Digital Lives are Altering the World Around Us", we'll take a look at the pros and cons of the changing data landscape. This second post in the series explores why human beings are enamoured with the idea of the Virtual Self.

Self Discovery and a New Understanding

This first aspect of self-tracking that makes it so alluring to us as human beings is the clarity that data brings to our understanding of ourselves, giving us a newfound sense of discovery as we learn new things about how we live. The data that we generate, Young writes, provides an "undeniably clear picture of how we behave. Maybe," she muses, "seeing my life expressed numerically would show me things that the subjective story I like to tell myself wouldn’t." What Young is getting at is that the Quantified Self makes visible information about ourselves that has been, up until now, invisible. Self-tracking is the idea of “creating a technology to track what is quicksilver and hidden about our lives and behaviours, and to make it visible.”

Our desire for clarity is connected to our desire for self-examination. Young cites Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, who connects this idea with the philosophy of seventeenth century philosopher John Locke. It’s "the rise of a notion of the individual who makes a reflexive turn toward self-examination," he explains, the "disengaged subject." The punctual self, as Taylor puts it, is "a self that is ready to apply instrumental rationality to the goal of mastering the self." Carlos Rizo, one of the organizers of Quantified Self Toronto, compares self-tracking to a game, "a game we play with ourselves to learn about ourselves."

As Taylor hints, this game of self-discovery is really about self-mastery. In a way, Young muses, self-tracking is the act of "applying techniques to ourselves, procedures that are designed to craft a vision of the body, and of the self. It is part of the modern project to submit the self to study, to make the self a site of observation and scrutiny, but also to submit oneself to technology in order to meet a performative ideal."

A Culture of Accountability and Improvement

Secondly, there are two pillars of our current culture that make the Quantified Self extremely appealing. The first is our concept of the passing of time, and our desire to not waste it. Laurie McNeill, a scholar of the diary form at the University of British Columbia, says that as use of the clock and calendar became more commonplace in the eighteenth century, a sense of personal accounting naturally followed suit. "Once we became able to record time," she says, “we became interested in how we were using it. Once you have a self and a life that should be lived valuably, you need to account for it." Self-tracking feeds this need to track our use of time.

The second pillar of our current culture is our desire for self-improvement. The popularity of books like The Secret and movements like New Age are manifestations of this newfound obsession. Young calls it a "culture of relentless scheduling and our ideology of self-improvement." Self-tracking can help us change our behaviour for the better by offering us tangible insight into how to live better. People can now make deductions, based on personal statistics, about how to get better at everything we do, from our physical health to our spiritual well-being.

Many self-tracking programs have Feedback Loops that are built into them that are designed to pinpoint changes we can make in order to improve. Young used the example of Adidas' MiCoach app, which gives runners words of encouragement while they're running based on how they're doing. Triggers like these help to remind us, at the right time, how we can do things differently.

Leaving our Legacy

Finally, building a record of our Quantified Self feeds our desire to leave a legacy of our lives, and building up manifestations of our digital existence. Our “disembodied, distracted, digital life” can feel fleeting and inconsequential, Young explains. It creates the urge, and the feeling, to document the physical body, creating relevance and concrete evidence of the physical manifestation of our digital personas. "It is a way," she says, "of creating and reinforcing a self that has substance, history, and, most importantly, physicality."

The data we generate, Young muses, gives us a much needed sense of being permanence. "Today’s urge to document the self is an attempt not just to assert the self but also to ground the self, to tether it, to re-embody it, to give it heft and substance. Tracking the body, documenting where it is precisely in time and space, actually only makes sense in a culture of distracted disembodiment and bodily alienation. It is a way of saying 'Look, I exist! Here is my body, what I consumed, how I moved my body through space and time.'"

This attitude, in a way, is connected to our desire to leave evidence and artifacts for those that come after us to discover. We have, Young says, an “impulse to document ourselves, to create a digital track record. It’s a continual registering of presence, and is, in a sense, a way of being 'seen' by others. It’s the urge to create the self as a documented, persistent, even curated object." She writes, "The pattern of our data seems to carry an explanatory power, a sense that life isn’t random or arbitrary, that, over time, the trivial acts of our mundane daily life shape a picture of who we are. Human beings create narratives about who we are in order to communicate to ourselves, and to others, what matters to us."

We've seen how the self-tracking trend has emerged, and why the idea of the Quantified Self is so appealing. But what about everyone else? What does the Data Revolution mean for society as a whole? Make sure to catch the next post in "The Data Revolution Series"!

The Data Revolution #1: The Virtual Self

The Quantified Self, Self-tracking, and our "Data Mapped" Virtual Selves

Data. We produce it, share it, and rely on it every day. We use it to help track our activities, to improve our lives, to know ourselves better than we ever have before. We create virtual images and breadcrumbs of our daily lives, share them with our friends, and build and curate temples to ourselves. Then we use that massive pool, that cloud of contributions, to plan our trips, research our purchases, and make the world a better place. And yet we continually ask ourselves: when does the use of our data cross the line? Are we living for better, or for worse?

"The Data Revolution Series" delves into the issues and intricacies of our increasingly data-driven lives, from tracking our everyday behaviour to contributing data points for the social good. Based on insights and commentary from technology journalist Nora Young's (@nora3000) first book, "The Virtual Self: How our Digital Lives are Altering the World Around Us", we'll take a look at the pros and cons of the changing data landscape. This first post in the series introduces the concept of "The Virtual Self"...

 

"The pattern I see emerging is one where everyday information about where we are going, what we are doing, and how we are moving, and how we feel is brought together in the creation of a digital picture of ourselves." -Nora Young, "The Virtual Self"

The Quantified Self

"The Virtual Self", the title of Nora Young's latest book and the theme of her presentation at Toronto's Third Tuesday meetup on June 25, 2012, strikes a chord in many ways. Not only does it nail the current zeitgeist trend that is permeating and changing the way that we live our lives, but it makes us question whether these changes are good for us or bad, and if it's the latter, whether there's anything that we can do to take greater control of how it influences us. The story of "The Virtual Self", although big, begins with a simple analysis of a current trend in our culture: self-tracking.

As Young describes, "More and more of us are keeping track of the statistical minutiae of daily life, leading lives that are increasingly numerically documented." Every day, consumers are tracking their activities, behaviours, and physical and emotional changes. For example, we track our running with Nike+, our reading progress and habits with Kobo's Reading Life, our opinions of restaurants and venues with Yelp, and our comings and goings from the same with Foursquare. GetGlue helps us keep track of the movies we've seen and the TV shows we've watched, Path helps us document our lives, including when we sleep and when we wake, and Mint.com helps us track how we're spending our money.

The end result is what many call the "Quantified Self", a "self-understanding by numbers, facts, or objective updates, not the free-form self-scrutiny or reportage of the diarist or blogger."

The Emergence of Self-tracking

How did this kind of life, and the behaviour of self-tracking, come to be? Young cites three elements of digital culture and technology that have contributed to this change in how we live our lives. The first is the rise of social media. Web 2.0, Young argues, planted the seeds required to convince us that sharing data and information about ourselves was a good thing. "As websites designed to help us post information took off, they encouraged us to share more and more details about our lives," she writes, "and to consider it quite ordinary to do so."

The second factor is the emergence of smartphones, and specifically, the accompanying app ecosystem. Prior to this, self-tracking involved buying separate devices and software for each part of our lives that we wanted to track, from our sleeping habits to the number of steps we walked to the number of calories that we ate. "The ‘app revolution’," she notes, "has made it easy to document highly specific types of information without having to invest in a new device." Not only did smartphones and apps make it easier to live a Quantified Life, it made it fun: "What would have been an unwieldy and bizarre commitment to personal information-gathering is now a casual and painless process...what once might have been an intensive, or very odd, personal commitment, [is now] an easy, off-the-shelf hobby.”

The final cultural shift is the growing importance of numbers and quantifiable results. With an increasing amount of uncertainty—in everything from the economy to the environment—consumers are seeking tangible ways to keep track of how the world around them is doing (from Unemployment Rates to the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere). They’re applying the same accountability to their own lives. Anand Giridharadas has called ours the “Age of Metrics”, referring to our newfound love of statistics and data.

Welcome to your Digital Data Map

The result of all our self-tracking is the aforementioned Virtual Self, what Young calls our individual digital "Data Map", a "digital, statistical version of [our] real, physical life." This is, in her words, a "digital version of our earthly selves", the "sum of all those status updates about how you are feeling, what you did, how you moved, what you ate." In other words, our Data-mapped Virtual Self is one that is "documented, recorded, enumerated, and public."

In the future, Young postulates, the contribution of information to our digital Data Maps will be increasingly dynamic and automatic, it will share our data with the right people and parties and move that information into the right context, depending on our needs. It will become so automatic and natural to us, she argues, that we will no longer identify with the concept of "going online” and “going offline". Instead, we’ll always be connected and contributing to our Data Maps.

This is, ultimately, the result of our increasingly digital lives. The increase in the prevalence of technology itself is increasing the relevance and impact of self-tracking. Young writes: "Simply by virtue of using digital tools, we are invoking a technology of surveillance of the self. As we replace our analog tools with digital devices, we’ll start to see a startlingly full picture of our behaviours, preferences, activities, and so on. As we stop reading paper books ad start using e-books, keep electronic calendars instead of paper diaries, and have our location-aware cellphones with us at all times, we are passively generating data about our behaviour.”

The question we might now ask ourselves is: why? Why have consumers fallen in love with the idea of self-tracking—how does it benefit us, and how does it fit into our culture and our nature as human beings? Stay tuned for the next post in "The Data Revolution Series"!