The BBC reports:
Mr Page said the less data companies like Google were able to hold the “more likely we all are to die”.
We hear many statements like this as Web 2.0 slouches towards technotopia to be born, and the more we hear them, the more we should question them. Certainly technology provides us with a huge range of benefits, but claims like the one above don’t do anybody any favours, particularly when they are so transparently self-serving. By happy coincidence, apparently, Google’s desire to monopolise your data coincides with Google’s desire to save your life!
The fundamental problem with people working in the technology sector is that they believe that societies can be fixed in a similar way to software. If only we had the data, Mr Page laments, we could save more lives. We”ll have a hard time demonstrating a causal link between the length of time Google keeps data and lives saved, but that may well be the case; the question is whether our lives are worth the price we pay for that data.
But wait! you cry, you can’t put a price on peoples’ lives! Unfortunately you can, and we do, and that’s the entire basis of public health initiatives of all kinds. So the social cost of permitting Google to keep our data for as long as it damn well wants must play a role in our decision-making, and we shouldn’t let technology (and particularly technology companies) determine our policy decisions. Out in the real world, problems are more complex than the data allow.