In what seems to be a new trend, I must start out with an important truth-in-reporting update regarding last week’s blog about my new-to-me truck which was actually-new when gas was still a buck a gallon. What I have to come clean about, so to speak, was that at the moment that blog was published my “new” truck was in the shop. What started out as yet another of my “Screw the Man” scams turned around – as they usually do – and bit me in the ass.
When I went to register the beast with the State of Washington I was informed that – according to the state – my fly ride was not worth the 1,600 simoleons I shelled out but, instead, four grand! And this would be the amount used to calculate the sales tax I owed. (A note here: As a state without income tax and a property tax level roughly equivalent to Des Moines, Iowa in 1936, Washington is forced to come up with some very inventive ways to extract cash from its residents, including their most recent foray into taxable marijuana.) There were of course some outs: 1) I could dispute the state’s valuation (Ha!), 2) I could get the previous owner to sign a statement saying that his truck was a piece of crap and that he ripped me off (which may explain the frantic Bible reading at his house), or 3) I could get an independent estimate of what it was going to take to bring the truck up to “average” quality.
I chose Door #3.
By the time the blog was embedded in the ether I was on my way back (walking) to the shop where I found out that my POS truck needed something like $4,200 in repairs to make it roadworthy.
Oh, well.
Clearly, my goal to have a truck worth the same as its scrap value had been met.
If I had only paid attention to the numbers.
Like everyone else does.
It seems like everywhere you look our lives are being tracked like never before and reduced to numbers. From these traces of our collective presence, decisions are being made that affect us. In the Brave New World we live in, everything we do is being reduced to an entry in a database: Where we go online. Where we go in the real world. What we buy and what we sell. Every move we make and everything we eat, drink, or take with us into the shower is monitored, tracked, and traded between companies that we have never heard of. This information is nearly instantly used to modify the ad content that our internet browsers are inundated with – if they find us online – or is used to target the promotional material stuffing our snail-mailboxes, or simply to keep lying around in some server, just in case.
Some of this tracking information is tied with your browsing and purchasing preferences. Some is collected as a “convenience” for you – like electronic tolls or public transit fare cards. But the big thing is that once collected this personal info never goes away. And all this is okay with you. Because you said so.
If you look at your credit card, checking account, or anything-you-have-or-do agreement you’ll see a reference to another document called the privacy statement which states what data the company may collect about you and how they can use it. If you delve into that a bit to see what‘s up, you’ll find a lot of very vague language and references to “affiliates” and “related companies” and what-not. What all these statements boil down to is the company telling you it’s really their game and if you don’t like it – go play somewhere else.
But we just click or sign without actually reading the agreements because we want this done. Now.
That’s true if you’re always buying things online or using credit cards or checks. But I beat the system by only paying cash and shopping at my local stores.
Sorry. You’re still screwed. Suppose you’re an anti-everything recluse living a hermit’s life in backwoods Maine. Next, suppose your Dodge pickup just blew a bulb in the turn signal so you walk into your local hardware store and tell them you need a new one. They look it up on the store computer, get it off the shelf, take your cash and you’re good to go.
Except.
When you told them you needed a bulb for a Dodge pickup of a certain year and they looked it up, the company’s inventory system automatically generated a replacement order for the bulb and sold the information that somebody in B.F., Maine bought a new bulb. The data miners who bought that little gem linked into the Maine Bureau of Motor Vehicles and got a list of all the owners of that year of Dodge truck in a certain radius of that store and – Bingo! – they know who you are.
No, really. In fact, it’s called “Re-identification” and if you follow that link you will be scared shitless.
In reality, it takes more than one of those anonymous transactions to link back you but, even if you only pay cash, they can figure you out alarmingly quickly. If you ever slip up and need to use a check or credit card, you’re theirs.
It goes on well beyond this personal information too. Anything you can think of is being counted, tallied, averaged, or summed. And saved.
Which all seems rather paranoid and alarmist – not that I’m apologizing, mind you – and when you stop and think about it, you’d be tempted to say: “That’s nuts. Do you have any idea how much information that is?”
And my answer would be: “Yup.”
Just for grins, come up with an “anything you can think of” and Google a question about it.
FYI: the average lemming density was about 3 per acre for the period 1988-2002.
See what I mean?
Welcome to the land of numbers where Big Data lives.
The first number I’d like to talk about is one, and its immediate predecessor zero. Upon these two digits all of the other numbers that form the foundation of Big Data are built. These two are, of course the numerals of the binary – base two – counting system that computers use at their lowest level. These, expanded by powers of two, form the set of 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, and on and on and on in the series that is also the heart of the bit-byte-kilo-mega-giga-tera-petabyte world of data processing and storage. As these numbers got bigger in terms of how much data could be cheaply stored, the numbers also got smaller in terms of how fast that information could be processed and transmitted. All the while prices have fallen like lemmings of a cliff as the increase in speed and capacity have shot up like rockets. The end result is that what once would have been a burdensome chore that would take days of computer time now happens almost instantly on almost infinite data sets for almost free.
Because of this, everything – no, really – is being tracked and manipulated and massaged and then put forth for you.
As a number.
The reason this is happening is that the human brain isn’t very good with big numbers. It’s good with little numbers: ten, twenty (if you’re barefoot), six (if you’re wearing mittens or work in a metal shop). So Big Data helps out by turning all those confusing big numbers into little numbers we can wrap our heads around. Even those annoying targeted ads, which are basically a statistical probability that you will buy something, are just an expression of a number.
You will find these numbers everywhere: the aforementioned probability that you’re ripe to make a purchase, or the millions of people out of work – a crowd too numerous to conceptualize – get reduced to a tiny fraction. The famous Inflation Rate is derived from nationwide prices that are tracked over time. Some numbers – a stock index for example – are calculated to help you compare something from one slice of time with another and to gauge trends.
That sounds like a good thing, right?
It might be if the numbers were really there to help you understand what’s going on. In reality, the people and organizations that benefit most from the numbers are the very ones that generate them. These numbers don’t exist to inform you of anything; they’re there to make you believe something. With the help of Big Data, all of these numbers are biased to incite the response from you that the people who produce the numbers want to see.
Like Three-card Monte or loaded dice, the game, you see, is rigged.