Week 9: Lyon's "Social Sorting" Ethical Critique

"As far as social sorting is concerned, this is a concept that alerts us to several related practices that produce uneven and unequal outcomes when the supposedly neutral and illuminating techniques of Big Data – especially predictive profiling 

– are applied to perceived social and political problems." 

(Lyon, 2015, p. 10). 

Big data is not without bias (it is not atheoretical), as there are organizations that shape the algorithms and the way the data is categorized. In so doing, the very life opportunities of individuals and groups may be limited without their knowledge. This is based on correlation and not causation in most if not all cases of analysis, as Vincent Mosco would cite (Mosco, 2014, p. 180, "To the Cloud": Big Data in a Turbulent World). Mosco also echoes the predictive nature of big data analysis (Mosco, 2014, p. 181).  What are the ethics surrounding the social consequence of sorting via predictive big data analysis? When will we be critically examining the power imbalance at play: who are the benefactors of big data social sorting? How would already existing and or historical racial and gender and socioeconomic discrimination be exacerbated through big data sorting? Is this an inevitable fate? If so, what can governments do to curtail this? To me Bid Data gives way to more questions that answers . It is also how we use the data that determines what we do with it, and how we interpret and understand it. But politically charged agendas of the powerful does not justify the ill use of big data.