Every day you are being measured, calculated, quantified, assessed, and evaluated by Big Brother. You may have heard of George Orwell’s book 1984. Big Brother is a character in his book; a representation; a symbol. Big Brother is a concept that is synonymous with both mass surveillance and the abuse of government power in modern culture. It goes without saying that ‘big brother is watching you’; he has been watching you since your birth and slowly but surely he is accumulating information about you in many ways. It is much like walking in snow after a blizzard; you leave tracks that are forever and always specific to you.

When you were born, you were labeled with a number to represent you as a person, you were given a birth certificate, and you were added to a file that represents you with fingerprints, DNA, and pictures. As technology has developed, there have been several platforms for people to use to create accounts for posting and storing personal data and information. Eventually, you signed up for an email, a Facebook, a Twitter, and Instagram, and other platforms that provided a free account in exchange for your personal data. This data is added to your file and tracks everything that you do on the internet, your likes, your dislikes, and the things that you search are all tracked and added to your file. It starts with a simple registration, then suddenly that information builds with key information that is submitted in order to create your accounts.

To create an account, you often have to put in your name, your email address, your phone number, your birthday, as well as other information that is pertinent to your profile. This information is stored in an online data base where all of your information is kept, and is always working in the background of the day to day activities that you are involved with, whether shopping, searching, or querying about online promotions. Some of this information is used to build a platform to target you for advertising; your searches are saved and added to a list of the things that you like or don’t like. This is a large shift in the business environment because thresholds are no longer retrained to geographic boundaries; anything can be shipped anywhere in the world for a relatively nominal fee, which means that companies can get you any product you desire regardless of where you live. A threshold is a capacity of buyers that are usually distributed in certain geographical areas, but now there are thresholds that can be developed by search inquiries, or by what you search online.

This has been a developing field for the past few decades. You’ll start to see a major shift in the demand of analysts that can crunch and calculate this data. You’ll also start to see incentives to push for GIS programs in Universities because this information is extremely profitable to companies. One prime example of this is Google Ads, which looks for various cookies in your web browser to discern what to advertise to you. If an advertiser knows what you are most likely to buy and can get that information to you, then it changes the scope and the impact of what you buy. Consumers can be easily targeted by the information that they are willing to share on these various platforms. Another real-life example of this was a news recap that I watched the other day at the gym. It had an analyst talking about using information to customize to their customers via recaps of their spectators during the game. One example was a video clip of a kid at a Cavaliers game doing a dance after LeBron James hit a money shot. The analyst claimed that it would change the scope of the marketing and advertising game completely for NBA ticket sales and sponsorships.

An example closer to home is a company that just moved into the area called Key Research Solutions. They are a company that pays its employees to make calls around the US asking various questions about politics, consumer markets, and public affairs. The most sure-fire way to make sure people are poor is to ensure that they are constantly spending their money.

Another thing to note is the Patriot Act. People are willing to give up freedom to ensure security; this is one thing that has been proved by surveys, research, and ample study. The Patriot Act condones all of this research and allows all of that information to be recorded. Your phone is probably tethered to one or more of your accounts which ensures more access to more people than ever before. Big Brother is using this information, not only to deliver you the goods you are likely to buy but also the politics you are likely to support. Big Brother isn’t one entity; it is a collection of entities supporting the same cause. Everything you do online is being recorded, calculated, and used against you in one form or another; be cognizant of that which you do on such platforms. The information is building, and it is being sold with your consent when you sign the Terms and Conditions.