A close up photo of a computer screen with unreadable numbers and words stack on each other and all different colors.

What if Computers Know You Better Than You Know Yourself?

By Ed Finn

I recently read about the launches of both an “ultrasecure” mobile phone for protecting privacy and a clip-on camera that takes a picture of everything you do at 30-second intervals. Our cultural relationship with data is more complicated and contradictory than it has ever been, and our debates on the subject almost always center on privacy. But privacy, the notion that only you should be able to control information about yourself, cloaks a deeper tension between information and meaning, between databases and insights.

Our digital breadcrumbs now tell stories about us that are deeply secret, moving, surprising—and often …read more

Source: http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/03/04/what_if_computers_know_you_better_than_you_know_yourself.html