The power of data and its influence on our lives: this stuff fascinates me. I read with equal parts enthusiasm and terror everything I could about Cambridge Analytica and the 2016 US Presidential election.
Cleaning up my browser tabs just now, I found this fun article entitled What Algorithms Know about You Based on Your Grocery Cart. Customer rewards programs, online shopping and searches, social media likes, and more are all being tracked. This Forbes article entitled How Target Figured Out a Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did is an oldie, but a goodie on data collection and analysis (the reference to the angry Tesco shopper in the first article reminded me of this one). It also put me in mind of this one that I read more recently, addressing how this information is used… dare I say against you?: Your Phone Isn’t Spying on You– It’s Listening to Your Voodoo Doll.
This may be deliberately fear-inspiring language, but it is (let’s pick a neutral word) interesting that user behavior can so accurately (mostly) predict future behavior. This voodoo doll article gives YouTube as an example (forgive my layperson’s rusty understanding of the mechanism): the moment you click, an algorithm (or several) are queuing up a series of videos that is designed to make you stay longer. And learning from what you then do.
It’s amazing; but as each of these articles describes, has the potential for misuse and abuse. If everyone was a good guy and there was no money to be made, maybe things would be different.
Back to what’s in your shopping cart, though. The first article also put me in mind of this sweet one I read yesterday in the New Yorker: The Underrated Pleasures of Eating Dinner Early. I’ll be using this question: what time do you eat dinner?
Go Forth 