The Digital You & The Automation Of Everything

 

How digital do you want to be?

 

The various diagrams below shows the different types of digital devices and the types of data they collect, it is all data collection of a person but in different environments. Where ever you take your digital devices and connect to the internet and this includes people moving in various types of transportation.

For those who embrace many of the technologies mentioned, the diagrams show the types of data collection now and data collection into the future. Smart Phone ownership around the world increases every year and that alone collects many forms of data about you.

 

The Digital You - The Person

 

The types of data collected from a person, not all of the technologies are currently wide-spread, yet. Their use will increase over time.

 

The Digital You - The Person
The Digital You - The Home

 

The types of data collected from a person in their home.

 

The Digital You - The Home
The Digital You - The Car

 

The types of data collected from a person in their car. The push for electric cars will increase digital connectedness in the car.

 

The Digital You - The Car

This article is not implying that all data is misused, where organizations are transparent about privacy options, without being hidden under several tiers of menu and make their default data and privacy settings all opt-in and offer some kind of real benefit for opting in to use their service, they have the right attitude about data protection. There can be technological progression and organizations using your data only with your permission, your data in this day and age, is you, it should be owned by you and what happens to it should only be your decision, and at any time it should be your decision to "easily" revoke it from any organization that has it. Unfortunately many organizations design their software so you can only use their x, y, and z options or even install their software, if you allow them to use a lot of information on you and in some cases the software requires information not even necessary for the purpose it was designed for.

 

The Opt-In option meaning all data collection and privacy settings are disabled by default unless the person using the service decides what kind of data and privacy settings they wish to allow or enable. If an option is enabled, the organization should detail how the data will be used. Even with these things in place there is still the question of trust, will that organization keep your data safe? will it be passed onto any third-party organization(s) without you knowing? and the potential threat of your data/information being stolen by hackers.

 

The types of data harvested through your digital devices is of course dependent on whether you use some or all of the technologies mentioned. For example, we know the many people will own a smart phone (or two) but not the smart watch, digital home devices or an electric car. As these devices become affordable to more people, the adoption of these services will increase. Digital everything will increase, you get convenience and entertainment and in return organizations, government, law enforcement, and hackers all have new ways of using your data to benefit them.

 

In a lot of cases the data is silently collected or because the user just wants to get on with what they want to do, they are forced to choose the accept all or enable all to use the service. All organizations make promises to keep your data safe until they get compromised and then the next new organization will make the same promises but also include quotes like "what happened to the previous organization will never happen to us, because we use x, y and z security features." then their systems are compromised, by the time this has happened organizations have already made a lot of money from your data and your data is now accessible by people that should never have access to it.

 

If you have read some of our other articles you will also know that not all people will be really connected in the ways described, because they just do not have the means to access these technologies, so essentially we are talking about the "Rich Countries", and not everyone in those countries will have the means to access all of these technologies. Let's be honest, the the data collection, "the data value" of native tribes, people living in poverty or people living in remote parts of the world, is going to be non-existent to small compared to someone living in one of the richer countries.

 

We are at the mid to latter stages of digitizing everything, this includes you and everything you interact with, this is The Digital You, as seen in the diagrams above. At the same time we are at the early stages of the Automation Of Everything. Here's something to ponder on and agreed this sounds totally sci-fi right now but, How long before It becomes cumbersome to even carry around smart phone or watch? Let's be honest they're just not making phone calls anymore or just telling the time, let's say someone comes up with a new innovation and says, "we have this convenient way for you to do all the things the smart phone and smart watch can do and you never have to forget it at home or lose it, using this small unnoticeable device we can implant into you." Would you do it for convenience? we were very quick to use a cashless system on the phone for convenience? we were very quick to be by the phone 24 x 7? We were very quick to be able to talk to your devices instead of typing things in? and so on, you get the picture. How integrated do we want to be with technology?, before we say, that's too much!

 

Where's all this digitization & automation going?

 

The Digital You - The Self

The determining factor of when this (below) starts doing everything and is walking amongst us, depends on how quickly breakthroughs are made, based on the current rate of innovation we can say fairly quickly, but you can envisage where its all heading eventually...

 

The Digital You - The Humanoid

Even before the sci-fi movie type humanoids are walking amongst us, with the current rate of digitizing everything and the early adoption of automating everything; you are going to be left more and more with your own thoughts, questioning your own usefulness as human being, questioning the human self and your consciousness more.

 

Professor Stephen Hawking

Professor Stephen Hawking (1942 - 2018) - BBC Interview Dec 2014 - There are pauses due to the speech synthesizer

 

The Digital You - The Decision
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January 2021

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