Personal Data, Big Business, and the End of Privacy

Adam Tanner, Fellow, Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University; Author, What Stays in Vegas: The World of Personal Data – Lifeblood of Big Business – and the End of Privacy as We Know It
 
In an age in which personal information is relentlessly harvested and aggregated, we’re eager to reap the benefits – but we lose sight of the fact that Internet giants, leading retailers and others are gathering data often with little oversight from anyone. And it’s growing ever more difficult for those businesses that choose not to engage in more intrusive data-gathering to compete with those that do. Tanner explores the Wild West of data capture and all the ways our personal information is driving commerce, whether we know it – or like it – or not.
September 24, 2014