Loading...
Please wait, while we are loading the content...
Similar Documents
Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One's Looking)
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Rudder, Christian |
| Copyright Year | 2014 |
| Abstract | QA its the fact of the vision itself. That we can get real data on even the most private moments in peoples lives is an astounding thing. Its like the second advent of reality television, but this time without the television part. Just the reality. Are you worried about any of this? I have mixed feelings about the implications. I myself almost never tweet, post, or share anything about my personal life. At the same time, Ive just spent three years writing about how interesting all this data is, and I cofounded OkCupid. My hope is that this ambivalence makes me a trustworthy guide through the thicket of technology and data. I admire the knowledge that social data can bring us; I also fear the consequences. You have a lot to say about race in the book, and you use data to shed light on the many ways it affects the way we interact with one another. What surprised you about your research in this area? Did you find anything unsurprising? The data on race was surprising only in its stubborn predictabilityfor all the glitzy technology, the results couldve been from the 1950s. I grew up in Little Rock and graduated from Central High, the first school in the South to be integrated: Eisenhower, the National Guard, mobs of white people screaming at nine black children, thats Central. The school embraces its history and is now over half black. Im no brave crusader, but race (and racism) were part of my education. So when, in researching the book, I unpacked three separate databases and found that in every one white people gave black people short-shrift, I wasnt shocked, you know? Asians and Latinos apply the same penalty to African Americans that white folks do, which says something about how even (relatively) recent additions to the American experience have acquired its biases. What makes this moment in timeand this set of datadifferent from the massive data surveys of the past, such as Pew, Gallup, or the Kinsey Institute? The data in my book is almost all passively observedtheres no questionnaire, no contrived experiment to simulate real life. This data is real life. Online you have friends, lovers, enemies, and intense moments of truth without a thought for whos watching, because ostensibly no one isexcept of course the computers recording it all. This is how digital data circumvents that old research obstacle: peoples inability to be honest when the truth makes them look bad. Digital datas ability to get at the private mind like this is unprecedented and very powerful. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.1038/scientificamerican0814-78d |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.mashed.net/dataclysm_who_we_are_when_we_think_no_ones_looking.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0814-78d |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
