What are they doing with my metadata?

David Weinberger really drove in the concept of the three orders of order. I found the most interesting to be the 3rd order of order. It is overwhelming to think of all the information that is “out there”. I will never be able to purchase a book online again without thinking about Everything is Miscellaneous. How the list of books compiled for me could have never been done with a card catalog. This is obviously a very basic example of how “digital disorder” works out great for the end user.

What I really found interesting was how valuable information about information really is. I don’t think I had a very clear idea of what metadata was before reading this book. Now I wonder how much market research has been done from each link I’ve clicked on. Every time I purchase Philosophy’s Hope in a Jar from Sephora.com someone takes note of it (well not literally). I can handle a bar code or a UPC label, but when reading about the radio-frequency identification technology, I felt violated. I had no idea that Prada puts RFIDs in their handbags or that Wal-Mart uses “Radio Tags to Track Clothing”. I thought I would look for some information on other ways to violate the privacy of the greater public. ☺

I found an article on NPR called High Tech Aging: Tracking Seniors’ Every Move. The article talks about a couple that found themselves in a situation that is familiar to me and many others. They were caring for an aging parent. They started a company called Adaptive Home. The technology uses multiple sensors that alert the children or caregivers via phone calls or text messages when their parents or loved ones are doing any number of daily activities. There is an interactive web page, calendar and many other applications that go along with the monitoring system. It is an intuitive system that can track and learn behaviors. This allows the system to understand when routines and behaviors change. It is actually able to predict problems and potential needs for assistance before something like a fall even happens.

I assume all of this information regarding the daily activities of the elderly, purchase tracking, link-clicking and so much more is being used for “market research”, but who really knows what is being done with our metadata?