Data Collection

The topics featured in Gandy’s article focuses on the notion of “racially coded data” (1) and how the data is translated into information that may or may not be put to the greatest use. Meaning that targeting certain races with a number of issues with the intention of aiding them, May actually cause more harm than help. He tries to argues that “racial statistics have not only come to represent the distribution of life chances in ways that continue to place African Americans down the bottom of the pile” (5) and then follows on by illustrating “some of the ways in which many of the same statistics are used to ensure that their status is less likely to improve” (5). He mentions this idea of a ‘racial disparity’ focusing on African Americans alone discussing racial coding as and what he calls the ‘panoptic sort’ have become ‘discriminatory technology and then states that how it “operates to the detriment of segments of the population” (7).

In Mark Andrejevic chapter 3 of his book iSpy he discusses the ideas of the origins of surveillance and power in the interactive era and how it they are managed. He uses extensive knowledge of “scientific management pioneer” Frederick Taylor; inventor of the idea of taylorisation, throughout his chapter whilst justifying the ideas of interactive media with notions like the Taylor system, managing in the workspace, monitoring from a distance, monitoring audiences and their consumption, and then directing his attention to the ideas of ‘the rise of the ratings industry.’ The outcome of Andrejevic work round out to the notion that the idea of surveilling and monitoring regardless from a distance or an intimate perspective is that “the scientific management of consumption relies on constant contact” ...

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... also states that “this crisis has been caused by politics, ultimately only politics can fix it” meaning that a legislation may need to be put into place in order to keep our metadata exactly that, our metadata and not the internet companies we are actively involved in every day. This certainly would help the situation but we also need to remain aware of what exactly we put up on the internet, and be aware that we may be targeted for certain uses of consumption and data collection. Naughton asserts the notion that “we are all in debt to Snowden for he has sacrificed his prospects of freedom and a normal life so that the rest of us would know what has happened to the technologies on we now depend”. From these series of events and our new found knowledge we now should possibly try to learn from our past usage on such sites in preparation for possible future issues.