SOCIAL MEDIA AND BIG DATA
We live in a connected world where almost everyone owns a connected device. That is a mobile phone, a tablet, a smartwatch, a car….
Now one of the main goals of our society seems to be the fully-connected world. In other words, that every appliance or device we use can be connected 24x7x365 a
of course sending and receiving information.
And what’s the role of social media on this world of data and information?
Social media was born to make social interactions and relationships easier and by the way more digital. Some pioneers found how to make business by developing new ways to interact with each other by instant actions.
In the very beginning, they were only simple ideas based on university facebooks or on evolved ways of instant messaging engineered by one person or a few individuals. And now some of them transformed in megacorporations providing us with a lot of customized services based on our interactions and choices.
What about big data? What is it?
Big data is mainly a mix of every data and information that a person generates directly or indirectly that is stored and treated by a company.
In some way, Big Data has always been there but the difference in recent years is how the technology has changed in order to use and manage all this data.
To further illustrate this topic, I will show some figures.
The amount of data generated by 2015 in an average household environment it was the equivalent to fill 65 iPhones by year, by 2020 it’s expected to be about 320 iPhones.
Obviously to get these numbers some has changed. We’re in the era of the Internet of Everything. As I previously mentioned we are in the way of a fully-connected world.
By 2003 we had about 500 Million of connected devices to the internet and by 2020 it’s expected to have more than 50 Billion devices, that’s the equivalent to 6,6 times the expected population by this year.
And all this information mixed with our identity information, the metadata to keep all information, the log that the systems are generating…are managed by using complex algorithms by companies and governments to take instant decisions or long-term decisions.
Another important point is that nowadays almost any company, government or entity can afford the direct or indirect use of these data.
It goes without saying that obviously the bigger the company or government the more they benefit from the big data.On the one side companies and governments are telling us that they are using our data so as to provide us with better services. They’re trying to make our lives easier and more efficient.
They’re shortening distances and making our global world better. We can talk to almost anyone, anywhere. We can make friends from all around the world. It’s possible for certain diseases to be always monitored and in some years, everyone could be monitored continuously in orer to prevent and early detect diseases. Our cars can send our position in case of an accident.
We all know hundreds of examples of the uses of technology and our data today.On the other side, it’s really complicated to know for what they are using our data.
Social Media companies and some of the biggest companies have developed complex profiling big data algorithms that could tell a lot of information about ourselves that even probably we don’t really know.
Besides that, some Government is monitoring our communications to prevent terrorist attacks. Some others can track us every moment through the different cameras located in their cities.
Companies and government are making decisions on behalf of us thanks to intricated AI algorithms. Who are designing these algorithms? Are they safe?
Really the main problem is that all these technologies are developed by people and none of them are perfect. That’s the reason why we can’t blindly trust them.
We have made great achievements thanks to the technologies and the internet but we need to limit the use that third parties are doing with our data, our pictures, our information.
Think about it!!