On Local Government: “Big Data” enters politics, and your life
In the post-mortems from the Presidential election, the biggest news was how President Obama’s team used technology to win and how Nate Silver used technology to analyze. In both cases, the source that created the strategy to success was data, and lots of it. In general terms, it is known as “Big Data.” The discussion of “Big Data” hit the public consciousness in a very benign way. Grocery chains were signing people up for “affinity accounts” to enable them to deliver discounts automatically on checkout. However, people concerned about information privacy hit the roof, claiming that now consumers’ purchasing habits could be tracked and marketing efforts could be targeted at them. Most consumers didn’t care, since the benefits (lower prices) outweighed the perceived risks (a loss of privacy). Nevertheless, the nose was under the tent and dossiers on people’s habits were begun. Companies have established huge businesses based on gathering these disparate points of data and presenting them to their clients in ways that enable them to better understand those to whom they are marketing. Concerns about these companies have grown over the years as their databases have become more and…
Read this story on easyreadernews.com