Collective Intelligence Article

There was an interesting article in the NY Times recently about collective intelligence and privacy concerns.

With the internet and mobile technologies, the amount of data that can be collected, aggregated, and made available as collective intelligence has increased exponentially in recent years. As with many technologies, the technology is ahead of the concensus on how it can/should be used.

As an example from the article, during the SARs outbreak, once an infected person was identified on a particular flight, other passengers could have been located and their movements tracked through their cell phones. Another example is Google search data. At an aggregate level, what people search for can be extremely valuable and insightful (as in Google flu trends). But, Google often has information on the user/household making that search - sometimes at the ip / computer level, sometimes at the userid level, and sometimes at the user level.

Although tech-savvy users may be aware of this, many others aren't. I'm glad a non-tech publication like the NY Times printed an article like this to get people thinking about this idea.