Friday, May 27, 2011

What Big Data Needs: A Code of Ethical Practices - Technology Review

A call for information responsibility…

In this era of Big Data, there is little that cannot be tracked in our online lives—or even in our offline lives. Consider one new Silicon Valley venture, called Color: it aims to make use of GPS devices in mobile phones, combined with built-in gyroscopes and accelerometers, to parse streams of photos that users take and thus pinpoint their locations. By watching as these users share photos and analyzing aspects of the pictures, as well as ambient sounds picked up by the microphone in each handset, Color aims to show not only where they are, but also whom they are with. While this kind of service might prove attractive to customers interested in tapping into mobile social networks, it also could creep out even ardent technophiles.



The potential dark side of Big Data suggests the need for a code of ethical principles. Here are some proposals for how to structure them.

What Big Data Needs: A Code of Ethical Practices - Technology Review

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