Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Algorithmic Discrimination: Big Data Analytics and the Future of the Internet

  • Chapter
The Future Internet

Part of the book series: Public Administration and Information Technology ((PAIT,volume 17))

Abstract

This chapter discusses several technical changes related to the Internet—the social semantic web and linked data, the instrumentation of natural and social processes, big data and graphing analytics, and cloud-based facial recognition—and focuses on several threats resulting from these developments. As billions, or trillions, of everyday objects, including the human body itself, are equipped with sensors, a variety of new types of data will be collected, aggregated, and linked to other personally identifiable records. These changes transgress personal privacy boundaries and lead to unjust algorithmic discrimination and loss of anonymity, resulting in undemocratic shifts in power. Three alternative scenarios for the future Internet are presented as contrasting possibilities to explore key uncertainties about the future for the year 2045. Because the framework for the future Internet is already developed and numerous aspects of it are already appearing around us, it is essential that we critically examine these systems and associated narratives in order to stimulate meaningful discussion and design policies and systems that respect citizen concerns. By examining and testing alternative visions of the future Internet, we can more closely align its development with ethical, human-centered insight.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Ackerman D (2013) Xbox One and PlayStation 4: Facial recognition shootout. http://www.cnet.com/news/xbox-one-and-playstation-4-facial-recognition-shootout/

    Google Scholar 

  • Acquisti A, GrossR, Stutzman F (2011) Faces of Facebook: Privacy in the age of augmented reality. Black Hat 2011. http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/~acquisti/face-recognition-study-FAQ/acquisti-faces-BLACKHAT-draft.pdf

  • Agrawal S, Lal Das M (2011) Internet of things—a paradigm shift of future internet applications. Paper presented at the second international conference on current trends in technology (NUiCONE 2011), Ahmedabad

    Google Scholar 

  • Angwin J, Stecklow S (2010) ‘Scrapers’ dig deep for data on Web. The Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703358504575544381288117888.html

    Google Scholar 

  • Ashton K (2009) That ‘Internet of Things’ thing. RFID Journal. Retrieved from http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/view/4986

    Google Scholar 

  • Atzori L, Iera A, Morabito G (2010) The internet of things: a survey. Comput Networks 54:2787–2805

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Balboni P (2012) EU Commission proposal for a general data protection. Proceedings of the 2nd Annual International Congress of u-World. Dalian, China

    Google Scholar 

  • Barbaro M, Zeller T (2006) A face is exposed for AOL searcher no. 4417749.http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

    Google Scholar 

  • Barocas S, Selbst AD (2015) Big data’s disparate impact. California Law Rev 104, Retrieved from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2477899

  • Benkler Y (2006) The wealth of networks: how social production transforms markets and freedom. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT

    Google Scholar 

  • Berners-Lee T (2000) Weaving the web: the past, present and future of the World Wide Web by its inventor. Texere, London

    Google Scholar 

  • boyd d (2011)‘Real names’ policies are an abuse of power. Apophenia. http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/08/04/real-names.html

    Google Scholar 

  • boyd d, Hargittai E (2010) Facebook privacy settings: who cares? First Monday, 15(2) http://firstmonday.org/article/view/3086/2589

    Google Scholar 

  • Breslin J, Passant A, Decker S (2009) The social semantic web. Springer, Heidelberg

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Castells M (2000) Materials for an exploratory theory of the Network Society. Br J Sociol 51(1):5–24

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Castells M (2009) Communication power. Oxford University Press, New York, NY

    Google Scholar 

  • CERP-IoT (2010) European Union, Cluster of European Research Projects on the Internet of Things. Vision and challenges for realising the Internet of Things. Brussels: European Commission—Information Society and Media

    Google Scholar 

  • Cisco (2014) The Zettabyte era: trends and analysis. Cisco White Paper. San Jose, CA: Cisco Systems. http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/VNI_Hyperconnectivity_WP.pdf

  • Custers B (2013) Data dilemmas in the information society: Introduction and overview. In: Custers B, Calders T, Schermer B, Zarsky T (eds) Discrimination and privacy in the information society: data mining and profiling in large databases. Springer, New York, NY, pp 3–26

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Dator J (2009) Alternative futures at the Manoa School. J Futures Studies 14(2):1–18

    Google Scholar 

  • Dourish P, Bell G (2011) Divining a digital future: mess and mythology in ubiquitous computing. The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • European Commission, Information Society and Media (2008) Internet of things in 2020: Roadmap for the future. European Technology platform on smart systems integration. Version 1.1

    Google Scholar 

  • Federal Bureau of Investigation (2014) FBI announces full operational capability of the next generation identification system. http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-announces-full-operational-capability-of-the-next-generation-identification-system

  • Gymrek M, McGuire AL, Golan D, Halperin E, Erlich Y (2013) Identifying personal genomes by surname inference. Science 339(6117):321–324

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Habermas J (1991) The structural transformation of the public sphere: an inquiry into a category of Bourgeois society. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Haggerty KD, Ericson RV (2006) The new politics of surveillance and visibility. In: Haggerty KD, Ericson RV (eds) The new politics of surveillance and visibility. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, ON, pp 3–25

    Google Scholar 

  • Heath T, Bizer C (2011) Linked data: Evolving the Web into a global data space. Synthesis Lectures Semantic Web: Theory Technol 1(1):1–136

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Himanen P (2001) The hacker ethic: a radical approach to the philosophy of business. Random House, New York, NY

    Google Scholar 

  • Hindman M (2009) The myth of digital democracy. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ

    Google Scholar 

  • Hvistendahl M (2012) China pushes the ‘Internet of Things.’. Science 336(6086):1223–1223

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • IBM (2008) Conversations for a smarter planet. http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/global/files/us__en_us__general__smarterplanet_overview.pdf

  • Ishigaki Y, Matsumoto Y, Ichimiya R, Tanaka K (2013) Development of mobile radiation monitoring system utilizing smartphone and its field tests in Fukushima. IEEE Sensors J 13(10):3520–3526

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jaimes A (2010) Data mining for user modeling and personalization in ubiquitous spaces. In: Nakashima H, Aghajan H, Augusto JC (eds) Handbook of ambient intelligence and smart environments. Springer, London, pp 1015–1038

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson B (2010) Privacy no longer a social norm, says Facebook founder.http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jan/11/facebook-privacy

  • Keller J (2011) Cloud-powered facial recognition is terrifying. The Atlantic monthly. http://www.theatlantic.com/ technology/archive/2011/09/cloud-powered-facial-recognition-is-terrifying/245867/

  • Khan R, Khan S. Zaheer R, Khan S (2012) Future internet: the internet of things architecture, possible applications and key challenges. Tenth International Conference on Frontiers of Information Technology 257–260 doi: 10.1109/FIT.2012.53

  • Lyon D (2002) Surveillance as social sorting: Computer codes and mobile bodies. In: Lyon D (ed) Surveillance as social sorting: privacy, risk and automated discrimination. Routledge, London, UK, pp 14–30

    Google Scholar 

  • Manfredi N, Mir D, Lu S, Sanchez D (2014) Differentially private models of tollgate usage: The Milan tollgate data set. IEEE International Conference on Big Data 46–48

    Google Scholar 

  • Nissenbaum H (2010) Privacy in context: technology, policy, and the integrity of social life. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Reilly T, Battelle J (2009) Web squared: Web 2.0 five years on. White paper presented at the Web 2.0 Summit, San Francisco, CA: O’Reilly. http://www.web2summit.com/web2009/public/schedule/detail/10194

    Google Scholar 

  • PEN American Center (2013) Chilling effects: NSA surveillance drives U.S. writers to self-censor. PEN American Center, New York, NY

    Google Scholar 

  • Schwartz PM, Solove D (2011) The PII problem: privacy and a new concept of personally identifiable information. New York University Law Rev 86:1814–1894

    Google Scholar 

  • Turow J (2006) Cracking the consumer code: Advertisers, anxiety and surveillance in the digital age. In: Haggerty KD, Ericson RV (eds) The new politics of surveillance and visibility. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, ON, pp 279–307

    Google Scholar 

  • Turow J (2012) The daily you: How the new advertising industry is defining your identity and worth. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT

    Google Scholar 

  • Uckelmann D, Harrison M (2010) Integrated billing mechanisms in the internet of things to support information sharing and enable new business opportunities. Int J RF Technol: Res Appl 2(2):73–90

    Google Scholar 

  • Uckelmann D, Harrison M, Michahelles F (2010) An architectural approach towards the future Internet of Things. In: Uckelmann D et al (eds) Architecting the internet of things. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, Berlin, pp 1–24

    Google Scholar 

  • Upturn (2014) Civil rights, big data, and our algorithmic future. https://bigdata.fairness.io/

  • Vermesan O, Friess P, Guillemin P, Gusmeroli S, Sundmaeker H, Bassi A, Jubert IS, Mazura M, Harrison M, Eisenhauer M, Doody P (2011) Internet of Things strategic research roadmap. In: Vermesan O, Freiss P (eds) Global technological and societal trends from smart environments and spaces to green ICT. River Publishers, Aalborg, pp 9–52

    Google Scholar 

  • Wadhwa T (2012) What do Jell-O, Kraft, and Adidas have in common? They all want to know yourface.http://www.forbes.com/sites/singularity/ 2012/08/08/ billboards-and-tvs-detect-your-face-and-juice-up-ads-tailored-just-for-you/

    Google Scholar 

  • Winseck D (2003) Netscapes of power: convergence, network design, walled gardens, and other strategies of control in the information age. In: Lyon D (ed) Surveillance as social sorting: privacy, risk and digital discrimination. Routledge, New York, NY, pp 176–198

    Google Scholar 

  • Winter JS (2014) Surveillance in ubiquitous network societies: normative conflicts related to the consumer in-store supermarket experience in the context of the internet of things. Ethics Inf Technol 16(1):27–41. doi:10.1007/s10676-013-9332-3

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Winter JS (2015) Privacy challenges for the Internet of Things. In: Khosrow-Pour M (ed) Encyclopedia of information science and technology, 3rd edn. IGI Global, Hershey, PA, pp 4373–4383

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Zittrain J (2008) The future of the internet—and how to stop it. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, 2550 Campus Road, Crawford 325, Honolulu, HI, 96822, USA

    Jenifer Winter

Authors
  1. Jenifer Winter
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jenifer Winter .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Communications, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa School of Communications, HONOLULU, Hawaii, USA

    Jenifer Winter

  2. Department of Business Administration, Aichi University Department of Business Administration, Nagoya City, Aichi, Japan

    Ryota Ono

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Winter, J. (2015). Algorithmic Discrimination: Big Data Analytics and the Future of the Internet. In: Winter, J., Ono, R. (eds) The Future Internet. Public Administration and Information Technology, vol 17. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22994-2_8

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22994-2_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-22993-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-22994-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation