Data stalking, data talking, data tracking

Microsoft Research Visiting Prof Kate Crawford tells the data gatherers that 'everything is personal' What do industry models of privacy assume? she asks. That individuals act like businesses trading info in fictional frictionless market. This is a convenient extension. but what works for the powers that be on one level, works differently for consumers. The convenient extension, thus, is an inconvenient untruth: the fix is in in the big data revolution.As Crawford writes: "Those who wield tools of data tracking and analytics have far more power than those who do not." In a way, the gap between the side arrayed to capitalize on big data and the side that is the data source could not be wider, or more disjointed.

Will insurance get Googlized?

There is something ineffable about advertising, burdened as it is with psychology. Could that be true for insurance too? The latter has become an industry built on an edifice that is a lattice of perception of risk, but you could say it is built on psychology just as easily (actually, a little more easy to say that). The industry's untapped opportunity is also a potential threat.  It is standing there, waiting to be Googlized.