Data Analysis
In the January 23 2006 Business Week magazine, the cover article "Math {will rock your world}" by Stephen Baker discussed at length how math majors (referred to as "quants") are transforming the business environment through new methodologies of data and trend analysis. Although this particular publication's audience is predominantly management-level financial analysts (my company CEO for example) Baker even discusses "The Dark Side" of all of this "This industrial metamorphosis also has a dark side. The power of mathematicians to make sense of personal data and to model the behaviour of individuals will inevitably continue to erode privacy. Merchants will be in a position to track many of our most intimate purchases, (QFC "club" cards) and employers will be able to rank us no only by productivity, but my wasted minutes."
For example, huge data bases like MSN.com, Blogger.com, MySpace.com or Google.com are mathematically analyzable by business interests looking that can extract demographic trends, popular keyword searches and hence hone their advertising and business models to more closely reflect what it is that we (insert your demographic here) care about. Ever wondered why these web portals are available for free? They exchange personally managable, uploadable web and PR portals for huge amounts of free data. For example, in Myspace.com, there are numerous sections to hard-code in various types of optional demographic data: sex, ethnicity, career interests, income level, kids, no-kids, cultural interests under the assumed aegis of "hi, I'm a young single person looking to make friends and/or network via socially oriented, individualized PR web pages." While there is no end result to what is done with this data, it's interesting to note that what you are providing to business interests is mission-critical data...for free! Or perhaps at best, for a sort of barter-system. Use existing networks and technology in exchange for all of your personal data, your most personal thoughts, best analysis, photography of your closest friends, etc.
Thomas Friedman, the NYT Columnist had a whole chapter in his book "The World is Flat" on the topic of "What happens to all your digital bits and bytes when you die?" Who owns it? Did you ever notice that once your data is uploaded to a post, you can't "copy-paste" it back out to a word document on your own hard-drive, even though you yourself wrote the content? There could be some really good intellectual property in all of this, and unless you own the hard-copy, you have no right and no way to prove that it belongs to you. At this precise moment, I am writing this directly into this free text box, consigning my creative output to cyberspace and whoever or whatever owns Blogger.com. We trade our creative output for the act of having a voice in the public (digital) domain, circumventing the normal and historical pathways to published works. Look, it's cheap, easy and free, but you don't own it.
For example, huge data bases like MSN.com, Blogger.com, MySpace.com or Google.com are mathematically analyzable by business interests looking that can extract demographic trends, popular keyword searches and hence hone their advertising and business models to more closely reflect what it is that we (insert your demographic here) care about. Ever wondered why these web portals are available for free? They exchange personally managable, uploadable web and PR portals for huge amounts of free data. For example, in Myspace.com, there are numerous sections to hard-code in various types of optional demographic data: sex, ethnicity, career interests, income level, kids, no-kids, cultural interests under the assumed aegis of "hi, I'm a young single person looking to make friends and/or network via socially oriented, individualized PR web pages." While there is no end result to what is done with this data, it's interesting to note that what you are providing to business interests is mission-critical data...for free! Or perhaps at best, for a sort of barter-system. Use existing networks and technology in exchange for all of your personal data, your most personal thoughts, best analysis, photography of your closest friends, etc.
Thomas Friedman, the NYT Columnist had a whole chapter in his book "The World is Flat" on the topic of "What happens to all your digital bits and bytes when you die?" Who owns it? Did you ever notice that once your data is uploaded to a post, you can't "copy-paste" it back out to a word document on your own hard-drive, even though you yourself wrote the content? There could be some really good intellectual property in all of this, and unless you own the hard-copy, you have no right and no way to prove that it belongs to you. At this precise moment, I am writing this directly into this free text box, consigning my creative output to cyberspace and whoever or whatever owns Blogger.com. We trade our creative output for the act of having a voice in the public (digital) domain, circumventing the normal and historical pathways to published works. Look, it's cheap, easy and free, but you don't own it.
