A baby born in the US today will live an algorithmed life. Her education, healthcare, career, who she dates, the ads she sees, what she reads, eats, buys, will be shaped by a feedback loop of data collected, processed, fed back to her, collected, processed, fed back to her.
We call this the new nature and the new nurture.
In the new nature, we know more about ourselves through data sources that we will have at our disposal. Information streams of personal and genetic data are increasingly available, but this raises psychological and emotional implications on self-awareness.
In the new nurture, retailers, corporations and government bodies use data mining to parse, segment, and sell to human beings. This marks a new moment for humanity: the algorithmed life.
The new nature and nurture create opportunity and peril. The increasing availability of data changes how we are able to know and define ourselves—at the risk of being defined by algorithms that we can’t control.
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