Metadata, whistleblowers, and secrets, oh my. With all the chatter about NSA and Edward Snowden, people seem even more afraid than before that their phones are being tapped and emails read. Now personally, I think if someone was listening to my phone calls and reading my emails, they must be bored out of their living mind. Whatever your personal convictions are on the matter, the stream of information around metadata – valuable metadata – has been affected. IT World brought us this information in their article, “Big data, metadata, and traffic analysis: What the NSA is really doing.”
I have bad news for those people who are truly concerned about this metadata frenzy. Big businesses have been using the same techniques to deliver a customized experience for you on the Internet for almost twenty years. Haven’t you wondered when the ad appeared on the side of a page for the latest and greatest waffle iron, how Amazon knew you were in the market? Metadata.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
