ANOTHER VIEW murray swart The observer in our pockets
THE WAY we view, use and acquire our information is constantly changing as our methods of communication develop in line with every breakthrough in technology.
In 1965, Intel co-founder, Gordon Moore, noticed that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since their invention and used this observation as the basis for a theory that predicted the rate at which technology would develop.
This theory would become known as Moore’s Law and painted a startling picture, not only because it foretold the evolution of the computer but also as it served as an early warning of a time when man and machine would find each other indispensable and even indistinguishable. Moore predicted that this trend in the development of integrated circuits would continue at a consistent rate and although the pace has slowed, the number of transistors per square inch has been doubling approximately every 18 months.
For proof of this, look no further than the phone in your pocket and acknowledge that this ordinary and everyday gadget makes the computational capabilities used for the Apollo missions, which transported man across distances of 356 000 km to the moon and back in 1969, look pitiful in comparison.
However, when Moore made his initial observation, more than half a century ago, I somehow doubt he would have envisioned a time when the number of transistors per square inch would have any impact on who rules the world.
In fact, back in 1965, few if any would have guessed that democracy would have less to do with political science and more to do with the analysis of personal information through a process that would back then have seemed like science fiction.
While time has seen Moore’s
Law tested, questioned and found to be less than flawless, today it remains a fairly good rule-of-thumb to determine where our gadgets will be taking us and when we will be reaching our destination.
More transistors means more capabilities, meaning more numbers and bigger ones at that, can be crunched more quickly, accurately and effectively.
This comes in handy when you take into account that more people means more voters with more personal information more readily available to harvest, process, analyse and exploit.
Thanks to the likes of Mark Zuckerberg (think Facebook), Sergey Brin (think Google) and Moore himself, to name but a few, we have more access to more information than ever before.
But at what cost?
In order to enjoy all this abundance, more of ourselves needs to be submitted on more profiles. It’s easy to look at all the pieces of ourselves that we freely share and argue that there is very little that can be extracted from knowing a person’s age, gender or even opinions but it is no longer just human eyes delving into our details.
Human eyes get tired. They are reliant on a heartbeat and brain that also power other pesky functions … like the ability to distinguish right from wrong, that tend to get in the way of progress.
In contrast, an algorithm doesn’t get bored, complain, care or consider. It keeps to instructions, without wavering in the slightest and can perform logical tasks more effectively than any person.
Useless information is a foreign concept to an artificial brain and with every piece of data, that brain is growing smarter.
It takes your gender and rules out that you are not part of half the world’s population. Then, it looks at your age and rules out 90 percent of the remaining half. With every little titbit, it narrows down who you are and how you think further and when it knows you better than you know yourself, it spits out a report for human perusal.
Unfortunately, these eyes don’t get tired quickly enough and while they are dependent on a heartbeat and brain, they see, think and feel no guilt or pity.