We live in the age of big data, after the stone and iron ages. Data is being collected in unimaginable quantities virtually in various areas of life, including healthcare. While the usefulness of data in today’s world necessitates its collection, there is also a growing concern about privacy and what happens to the data. These concerns are usually raised by people like Ebeling about who data is collected. People are guaranteed their privacy and promised that the data will not leak into the wrong hands, but the contrary often happens. Health practitioners and their patients contribute to the big data network without genuinely consenting to it. This data has gotten in the hands of people who now exploit it.
Big Data has led to both violations of labor rights and material harm. First, patients’ bodies, which are presented at health facilities for treatment purposes, are commoditized. They are viewed as sources of information that can be monetized. Strictly speaking, patients provide labor, referred to as bio-labor, not just without pay, but also without their consent. In this regard, the confluence of the mining of bio-data and capitalism amounts to exploitation of labor that is arguably akin to slavery. Second, when this data is rematerialized, it can cause material harm to the patients from whom it was collected, for example Ebeling’s marketing baby (Gasull, & Riom, 2019). In this sense, Big Data plays the role of pedaling labor exploitation and material harm.
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Moreover, Big Data today plays the role of ‘factory raw material’. In fact, institutions and companies have built their business models around it. There is the data brokerage industry, which actually consists of a complex ecosystem of public institutions, private businesses, and even the United States government (Gasull, & Riom, 2019). With varying levels of consciousness about their actions, they engage in the collection, trading, analysis, and repackaging of information on health records – both publicly and non-publicly available (Gasull, & Riom, 2019). The ‘modified’ data is then sold as a commodity, without the consent of patients or health practitioners who collected them for medical purposes. In this regard, big data functions as a business commodity whose commercial transfer violates the privacy of patients.
Back to “marketing baby”, Big Data is today used as a business competition tool. Before the implementation of Big Data came into the scene, marketing campaigns were just put out there, in the hope that as many people as possible who need a particular product or service will be reached. Today, Big Data has helped optimize marketing in terms of identifying potential consumers of a product or service and then targeting advertising at them. Ebeling, who tried many times to have a baby, was a victim of such data exploitation, as was materialized in the ‘marketing baby’ and harm the material harm it caused her (Gasull, & Riom, 2019). While Big Data has played the role of customizing marketing, it has resulted in exploitation and harm.
There are a number of takeaways from the reading that can help the class create a plausible conspiracy theory. While Big Data is a defining factor of this age, it can also play harmful functions if not used in adherence to ethics, morals, and laws. The mining of health data is tantamount to exploitation of labor, as the resultant Big Data often ends up being used for purposes for which patients never consented and /or for which they never get paid. Big Data technology has also allowed the commercialization of personal data, creating new revenue streams and even business opportunities for individuals and institutions that do not care about the people from whom the data was collected or who collected it. The use of personal data for targeted marketing is not just another form of exploitation, but it also causes material harm, a violation of business ethics.
References
Gasull, C., & Riom, L. (2019). Healthcare and Big Data: Digital Specters and Phantom Objects,
Mary FE Ebeling, Palgrave Macmillan. Revue d'anthropologie des connaissances , 13 (1), 293-298.
