DECIDING FOR YOURSELF OR A PRIORI

OLD IS SOMETIMES BETTER
Have you followed the almost other worldly debate between
Twitter and Google about access to data and subsequent
sharing of that information?
Link here for background from Reuters news.

This very medium that we are sharing at this moment is 
extraordinary in its depth, reach and ability to be 
instant. It continues to change how we live, inform ourselves and think.  And yet as we rely on its
capacity, it begins to replace some of our
own intellectual command.  Decisions are being made for us.
This video appeared here earlier, but many of you missed it,
according to the analytics available to even a blogger such as me.  And that is part of the point.

The technology is impressive, even if inevitable.
But I wonder what happens as the decision making, fed by 
 data mining and analytics, continues. Will
we become like the humans depicted
in the Pixar masterpiece Wall-e?
What happens to the human specie if everything
is done based on convenience, prior patterns
and algorithmic decision making?
I fear that anything that begins to shape or trim 
our curiosity and free exploration leads us
to being intellectual chia pets.


HERE IS AN EXAMPLE OF HOW IT HAS CHANGED
The video was recorded during a break
on the NBC Today show in January 1994.
Bryant Gumble and Katie Couric ask
WHAT IS THE INTERNET ANYWAY?

I assume Bryant and Katie now get a kick out of 
their naivety. In those days
there was no threat to the media from the new
technology platforms that today call
institutions like the network news "mainstream" or "lame stream" media. Of course all news organizations
calculate how to survive.
Computer mined and manipulated data leads to 
a kind of apriori decision making,
but how free or unbounded is it?
What price for convenience?
I hope you sometimes visit the 
21st Century Intelligence component at the
very bottom of this page.  It does a great 
job of tracking the business of our tech future.
See you down the trail.