I was commenting to a Facebook friend who had posted about the failure of Romney’s ORCA ground game to get out the vote versus the success of Obama’s GORDON technology to track Obama-leaning voters when some of my concerns about all this somewhat crystallized.
In some ways, some developments in this campaign leave me a little concerned, in particular Nate Silver’s incredible ability to predict and the Obama campaign’s incredible ability to map (apparently named Gordon). Obviously the data is out there so it isn’t as if either is inventing data or corrupting the process. But that’s true when it comes to all of the tracking done by Google, our telephone companies, our ISPs and the like in this electronic/digital age and the challenges all this tracking, recording and storing poses to our personal privacy and, perhaps, our individual freedom. I, like many others, have become increasingly concerned about the ways things can be and are monitored, mapped, stored, retrieved and used to predict, manipulate, and the like.
I’d say I’m feeling some diffuse anxiety about all this, particularly as these techniques, approaches, strategies and the like will only become more prevalent. I’m not a Luddite and I’m glad Obama won. And, the use of sophisticated statistical modeling with respect to data already collected by others is different from collecting data in order to control, manipulate and mislead others. But the increasing ability of organizations, including governments, to accumulate and aggregate all of this data is quite scary.
Originally posted on Nov. 10, 2012
