Big Data permeates all aspects of modern life, which is why author Henrik Skaug Saetra has written a book about the associated threats to liberty. The main puzzle surrounding the threats of Big Data to liberty are usually either a) lost in vagueness due to the concept of liberty being employed without a clear understanding of its content, or b) lost in definitions that employ flawed traditional understandings of what liberty really is. When the threat posed by an all-encompassing phenomenon that has grown to the proportions Big Data has, we have both an interesting, and potentially very important, puzzle on our hands. The phenomena discussed in Big Data's Threat to Liberty: Surveillance, Nudging, and the Curation of Information are related to how we are constantly under surveillance by various actors. Data is gathered from our homes, our cars, our smartphones, various devices around the house, in addition to general surveillance through ubiquitous camera surveillance combined with facial recognition and the gathering of data through social networks, commercial and public websites and services. Is being constantly watched compatible with liberty? Furthermore, the information gathered is used to influence our actions. Detailed personality profiles are employed in order to make us purchase products and services, or pay our taxes, though tailor-made nudges aimed at irrational and subconscious mechanisms, and delivered with a level of precision only possible with Big Data-driven algorithmic curation of data. Are we free, when manipulated or coerced in this manner? Finally, the information we receive in various media is curated by algorithms, and even people are curated in manners meant to satisfy our desires. By providing us with what the algorithm believes we want, we are spared from the exposure of unpleasant information, and even unpleasant people. The ideological landscapes we traverse are thus characterized by conformity, and a concomitant tyranny of popular opinion becomes ever more coercive as this occurs. These threats to personal liberty are covered in a new and unique contribution to the ethics and pragmatic approaches to the evolution of Big Data as a pervasive force in society, now and in the future.

Book Information
ISBN 9780128238066
Author Henrik Skaug Saetra
Format Paperback
Page Count 232
Imprint Academic Press Inc
Publisher Elsevier Science Publishing Co Inc