“The promise of a technology driven world may not be all goodness ... but something far darker and disturbing,” Namrata Rana and Utkarsh Majmudar write in their book Balance - Responsible Business for the Digital Age. Rana is the India Ambassador of University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, and Majmudar writes about companies’ business responsibilities. Both are visiting faculty at the Indian Institute of Management in Udaipur. The authors contend that the immense challenges that all nations face presently—waste, water, energy, biodiversity, inequality and data—have led to the emergence of “a consciousness about the earth.” Alongside, the tremendous technological developments of the past decade have also helped evolve “strategies ... that can help mitigate our misuse of the planet.” They write that, in such a scenario, “responsibility and balance can’t just be a few additional words that are tossed into the discussion.”
In the following excerpt, the authors discuss how every sector of the world economy “is seeing the benefit of capturing data and using it for increasing sales.” As data personalisation becomes central to business models across industries—education, healthcare, insurance, banking, among others—ordinary people can be “easily targeted, identified and therefore manipulated.” As India grapples with regulatory issues around privacy, data-hosting and a concomitant lack of awareness, Rana and Majmudar write,“we seem to be sitting on a time bomb.”
Ad tech conceals a dirty secret. It is increasingly personal and relies on tracking people. Re-targeting has been used by marketers to follow customers around. Small bits of code that were downloaded onto your computers and mobile phones enable companies to track customers, no matter which website they visit. This small code constantly aggregates data and serves up appropriate content, campaigns and banners to entice customers into buying whatever they are selling. If you visited a clothing website or clicked on a banner and were surprised that no matter where you go you get information about the same apparel company, you are being tracked. A constant reminder to finalise the purchase.
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