It’s hard to say if, for the regular person, how technology
came to impact their lives once a new invention comes out. It’s safe to say
that during the 1700 to the 1950’s the big leaps in tech, like the airplane
slowly crept in to peoples’ lives. People probably knew of the airplane then
but for the technology to be “felt” by the regular consumer took several
decades. Fast forward to the late 90s and 2000s with the development of the
internet, social media and mobile devices – it takes less than a decade for a
new technology to be used by the masses.
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| *credit to owner |
Take the smart phone and social media as a present example.
I need to link both since one probably helped spur the other. Facebook was
started in a dorm in 2004 and the first iPhone was launched in 2007. In about a
decade 2 billion out of the 7 billion of earth inhabitants have a smart phone
(maybe more if you include the regular mobile phone). That is how the rapid
growth of technology has impacted the world in increasing speeds.
Because of its omnipresence and rapid growth people seem to
take for granted that these technologies are now all knowing. While Apple is
maybe top of mind on the niceties of technologies, Google has the platform that
probably most people revolve around. Google is probably better than the God you
worship. When you pray to God, you have to wait for an answer and probably need
to reflect if your prayers were answered or not. Ask Google – and you get an
answer. Whatever question you want to ask, Google has an answer. Just say “Ok
Google” and it’s awake ready for whatever question you may ask.
Google knows you! Who you are, what you do. It knows what
your habits are. Where you work, how much you earn. The more you use it the
more it gets to know you. You ask it for directions, it knows where you go how
often you go what routes you take. It’s practically on all devices you use or
will use.
If you are crept out of all of these, you should. But it
won’t keep you from using it. It’s convenient, it makes life easier and it has
all the answers! You need you phone, you need to get directions, you need to
keep in touch, you rely on the technology to make your day to day work more
efficiently.
Here’s a list of what Google probably gets from you and we
see how they do it by platform or device.
Desktop via Google search, Google Chrome and Google Maps
Search history – essentially what you search for
Browser history – what websites you look at
Maps – what places you look into
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| A months worth of Google Maps data. They know where I went. |
Having a mobile device running on Google’s Android platform will
get to know you better. Most of the thing mentioned prior are all on the phone.
But the phone goes with you. So it know where you are, when you planned your
trip, what route you are taking and how you got there. It even knows how long
you stayed.
Google has a very good reason for this though. All these
services they provide for free anyway. They get their revenues from advertising.
They want to get to know us better in order to give us more relevant
information and with the data they get from using these platforms they provide
advertisers to create and implement better advertising.
When you sign in or login to use whatever of their products,
you technically link the data specifically to you. Even if you don’t however,
it is most likely linked as well. I’m quite sure the software they use can
easily figure out whether a device is being used by just one person or used by multiple
users. Just an example, if Google Analytics figure out the demographics and
consumer profile of the visitors to a website – it can figure out a lot more
things.
Should you be afraid? Technically, yes, but then again why should
you? What would make Google be interested in your particular life? Commutatively
they need your data as part of a bigger data set. But your data in particular it’s
of no interest to them, unless you have a stalker within. Even with this
sacrifice in privacy, it highly unlikely that people that people would ditch
all this privacy anyway.
The fact, that there are over 2 billion people in
social media blasting their lives to whomever wants to see it – people want to
show off. So, privacy?
So, you pray to God to seek help for your problems but
Google can answer them real time and probably knows you as much as God does. So
yes, Google may technologically be your god.
