Google: ‘I’m Feeling Sicky’
While worries over Google's "big brother" surveillance practices still worry many, a softer, more health-conscious side of the search giant is partnering with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The tool, "Google Flu Trends," uses the aggregate regional data obtained from flu-related searches to predict epidemics weeks before they can be diagnosed by traditional measures.
While worries over Google’s “big brother” surveillance practices still worry many, a softer, more health-conscious side of the search giant is partnering with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The tool, “Google Flu Trends,” uses the aggregate regional data obtained from flu-related searches to predict epidemics weeks before they can be diagnosed by traditional measures.
WAIT BEFORE YOU GO...The Guardian:
Google already has a window into our souls through our internet searches and it now has insight into our ailing bodies too.
The internet giant is using its vast database of individual search terms to predict the emergence of flu up to a two weeks before government epidemiologists.
Google Flu Trends uses the tendency of people to seek online help for their health problems.
By tracking searches for terms such as ‘cough’, ‘fever’ and ‘aches and pains’ it claims to be able to accurately estimate where flu is circulating.
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In the real-life version of the dystopian novel "1984" we seem to be caught in, Trump is our very own idiosyncratic version of Big Brother.
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The best literary precedent for what we're enduring now is not the absolute order of Big Brother but the irrational eruptions of King Lear.
On Tuesday, a federal appeals court found that the Wikimedia Foundation had standing to argue that the National Security Agency was violating its First and Fourth Amendment rights by spying on its users' communications.
A recent hearing by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform reviewed law enforcement use of facial recognition technology and got some troubling information.
I suspect we're about to have the screw-you presidency of all time, far surpassing George Orwell's vision. And believe me, that will prove to be dystopian beyond compare -- or do I mean beyond despair?
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