For over five years now, I’ve mentioned Patients Like Me in nearly all of my “digital engagement” related speeches. It is one of my favourite examples of big data used to improve actual lives.
The largest shift I’ve seen over the course of the last year in the digital space has been regarding the concept of privacy.
As always, I like to start with a definition:
“Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively. The boundaries and content of what is considered private differ among cultures and individuals, but share basic common themes. Privacy is sometimes related to anonymity, the wish to remain unnoticed or unidentified in the public realm. When something is private to a person, it usually means there is something within them that is considered inherently special or personally sensitive. The degree to which private information is exposed therefore depends on how the public will receive this information, which differs between places and over time. Privacy is broader than security and includes the concepts of appropriate use and protection of information.” -Wikipedia
For those of you that missed it, the February 27th-March 5th edition of The Economist featured a special report on the over abundance of data, and where we’re heading with it. This may seem like a boring topic at first, but if you start reading , you’ll quickly realize why I continue to be so interested in social media, especially the broader social-cultural and global implications of  all the content/data that we are feeding into “the cloud“.
Rather than providing you with a summary of the article (which hopefully you will read in full), I am providing some excerpts which IÂ highlighted myself while reading: