Remember the book 1984 written by George Orwell? The fiction written in 1948 talks loudly about what concentrated accumulation power could do to people. The story takes place in the fictional country of Oceania and the character of Big Brother is said to be inspired by Joseph Stalin.
Big Brother is the scary powerhouse of Oceania whose government has enforced a high degree of censorship to its citizens. The government of Big Brother has manipulated the minds and actions of all its citizens by denying access to knowledge. The basic rule of Oceania goes like,
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
— George Orwell, 1984
The prophecy of George Orwell is, unfortunately, turning into reality and our human minds and actions are in urge of being hacked. This time it is not in the fictional land Oceania but in the whole world. Yes, Big Brother is really watching you! The traits we leave all over the internet via the data generated out of digital gadgets, social media, social security information, Bio-Metric details are all capable of studying our psychological and physical attributes and eventually manipulate and consume us.
Doubtlessly Information is wealth and today the saying is more relevant than any other times in the history of humankind. The evolution of data started as early as the Human beings shifted from foraging to agriculture when the barter system was introduced, commodity exchange needed to keep track of accounts in the form of clay tablets[1]. Clay tablets became papers, then papers became prints, now prints are replaced by electronic data from various applications which at first lied within the structured databases of the companies and now with the Internet and digital revolution, the volume of the data multiplied exponentially. They say we produce 2.5 quintillions of data every day at the current pace and this data comes from blogs, websites, mobile apps, sensors, social media sites etc, hence the Big Data.
Yuval Noah Harari, In his books Sapiens and 21 lessons for the 21st century has alerted us of the data being accumulated in the data centers of the silicon valley giants, how they are abused and how else can they be abused and possible worst cases that can happen out of the data abuse. Remember the CEOs of Facebook and Google were roasted over the data abuse by the American Congress. There were serious allegations against Facebook that they have manipulated the people and changed the American Presidential Elections.
Let us not limit with Google and Facebook, Amazon decides what you need to buy. We are being preyed by the digital revolution happening over the years and our behaviors are being hacked and manipulated. What is the worst that can happen to us if the trend of being hacked continues? There will be a group of elites who will have access to everything, and there will be another majority who are ruled and fooled by the elites. We should take charge before it is too late!
Sharmili unplugged....... 