For all its benefits, however, Big Data remains a form of soft surveillance.
The Samsung company recently warned users of its Smart TVs that the inbuilt voice recognition feature allows private conversations to be recorded and stored in the Cloud. These private conversations are then accessible to third parties. George Orwell would have loved that.
This is perhaps an isolated incident and Big Data provides too many benefits for us to attempt to turn back the clock. However, the hacking of biochips would render personal privacy even less intrusion-proof.
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Implants may appear convenient, but we must consider whether or not we want our bodies to become hackable devices.
Internally ‘worn’ chips also raise other ethical considerations.
One of the most pertinent relates to the line between humanity and technology. As we use nanorobotics and bio-mechanical chips to inject a new breed of prosthetic devices into the human frame, will we lose our sense of differentiation between what is human and what is machine? At what point then might we truly become androids?
Far from being frivolous questions for sci-fi aficionados, these are now subjects undergoing serious debate in major universities – particularly in fast-growing ethics faculties. (What was sci-fi yesterday becomes wi-fi tomorrow.)
Commercially-oriented chip implants also raise questions relating to digital debt. The growing number of charities and social enterprises devoted to helping the indebted bear witness to what is already a rapidly spreading problem in modern societies.
The uncoupling of spending from physical cash has doubtless played a key role boosting personal debt. Paper money and coinage have substance and weight; it is relatively easy to keep track of how much we spend when our money has a physical presence. We know it’s time to wind back on impulse purchases when the wad of cash in our pockets starts to feel a little on the light side.
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Credit cards do not change weight when money leaves our accounts. At least, though, the process of filling out a credit card slip – now less and less a part of purchasing, thanks to wave and pay – provides some kind of physical reminder, albeit a tenuous one, that purchases cost us something of real-world value.
The advent of digital currencies such as bitcoin creates a potential for even greater overspending. The ones and zeroes of binary code have no weight at all. Implanted chips will continue to erode the link in human consciousness between spending and real-world value.
Arguably, companies like Visa have little interest in this problem. There are real benefits for them in divorcing the act of a consumer’s spending from any process of forethought.
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