Letter to the Editor: Data is the new oil but doesn’t help humanity
Data is the new oil bringing great benefits for digital media corporations. But how does this advance the cause of humanity?
There is derelict cynicism in commercial and socio-economic models where nuclear energy or fossil fuels are required in very large amounts for the huge numbers of data farms to store what we may consider rubbish as data — ours, or what is offered to draw our interest, and our payments.
Vile pornography is included in that, which our children may view, that their details of use and more get stored away that can later be mined from such data farms. This is part of the ‘data is the new oil paradigm’.
Meanwhile, we largely ignore climate change in the course of our daily consuming. We demand flash cars, red meat, and plastic with everything. We need cotton that requires vast amounts of water to process — and the dyeing and other processes can horribly affect some rivers and their users: aquatic, avian and human.
Horribly, and in large measure, we give out about and abuse, cruelly exploit, or brutally ignore over 70m refugees globally; 13m from Syria. Do we imagine that, somehow, it could never be our turn?
Here, as everywhere, children need to learn how fragile is our world and to prepare themselves for a more difficult future as a result of our profligate living that keeps us comsuming and burning our only home.
Can it be that digital media corporations keep feeding junk at our children so they might not notice what has become of the world due to our greed and our insatiable avarice? Do we not even care enough to notice?
