Computers can know more about you than you do

People being addicted to small screens is nothing new. The term “generation of zombies” was actually mooted many years ago, when the time spent on staring at or touching smartphones or computer tablets was threatening to eclipse the time spent on other human acts.
But while many see nothing wrong with this unabated trend, others are getting increasingly disturbed by the growing roles of computers in human affairs.
Latest research has found that by analysing a few dozen of your social media “likes”, a computer will know more about you than your friends or office colleagues. If hundreds of likes are analysed, the computer will know more about you than your roommate or closest friends. Analyse even more likes and the computer will even know more about you than you do, it’s said.
In other words, the computer can select you a birthday gift that hits the nail on the head. It can recommend you a movie that even your best friends would neither think of nor know about. It’s able to not only pick you a shirt that you like, but also give it to you in the colour you love.
Again, this is not earth-shattering news. The YouTube homepage recommends different clips to different users. The IMDB website knows what films, actors and actresses you have browsed over the past few years. Amazon knows what products you regularly look at. The computer learns about your ideology from quotes that you "favourite” or like.
But it says a lot about many things if we have to consult a computer about mum or dad's favourite restaurants or holiday destinations. It is all right for a computer to remind us to get a wedding anniversary present, but it’s entirely another thing if we have to ask it to name the best gifts for our wives or husbands.
Statistics show there were about 1.79 billion users of social media in 2014 and the figure could reach 2.44 billion by 2018. With online marketers trying to make the best use of that explosion, the trend of computers doing human jobs will only become bigger. Data collection and analysis will only get better and better – far beyond our imagination.
One trend that is changing the world, they say, is we are depositing basically everything “in the cloud”. It began with something easily forgettable or something trivial or something digitally bought that should not permanently occupy our storage space.
However, the dependence on the cloud grew and it started to affect memories that are supposed to be intact. This is why some people are afraid that the “line” defining our humanity is in danger of being crossed.
The only way to keep the line clear (if you don’t want to go with the flow, that is) is to "look up". We laugh at a satirical photo of the baby with the caption “If you see my mum on Facebook, please remind her I’m still in the sink”, not because it’s cute, but because it can really be true. When we look down too much, we let the computer know too much and keep too little to ourselves.
Not wanting to be deemed an alarmist is common. Besides, computers are helping with day-to-day activities a great deal. And it can be a losing battle to try to prevent it from knowing all and knowing best.
In the end, it will be up to individuals. Some may like being tech geniuses, but others may prefer being "dumb" humans. Either way, the machine’s smartness will just keep growing.