The newest trend in media devices is probably the fact that everything is becoming ´smart´, for example smartphones, smart TVs and also smart houses. Smart products in this case can be seen in the way that Uckelmann described, “That humans dispense some of their control activities to technological products and services” (Uckelmann, 2008, p. 274). This means that these products are multifunctional and react on their environment and learn from the environment by saving data. This makes our live much easier and our devices help us reminding things and control things more efficiently.
One of the latest products is the smartwatch, a watch that connects with your smartphone and register the environment while you wearing it. A watch designed to not only show you the time but also has loads of other functions. This means that you can check the latest data on your watch that connects with your smartphone, your watch sends you all the notifications from your phone and even more. The smartwacht is able to measure most of your body functions, your movements and by that can give you data and instructions about your health. This makes the watch multifunctional, wearable during work, social meetings, business meetings and also during sports. They call it your own personal assistant around your wrist.
This all sounds amazing and super simple because the most of the people possess a smartphone, so a smart watch is just an extend of that. A perfect way of making devices multifunctional and a perfect way for people to increase control. Personal data and the storage of it is on this moment a hot item ant this is also the case for me with the smartwatch. All the gained data is collected and stored on the servers from the smartwatch but do we actually want to give them our personal body data like temperature, movement, oxygen level and frequency of our heartbeat?
First when I thought of this I didn’t really saw this as a problem or crucial thing, but now when I give it a second thought I get a little bit hesitant. For example, a few years ago the healthbrance came with something new namely an national dataset that included everyones personal health and hospitaldata who gave permission for it. Most of the people didn’t gave their permission because of their privacy norms. But now people do give this kind of information at the moment that they start wearing a smartwatch.
So what do they actually do with the data that is stored by the servers? Stored data, like I already said, is not new and it is a hot item on the moment because personal data is getting sold tot third (commercial) companies. If we also give them our personal body data, will they sell this to health insurance companies? I think that this can create problems for people and their privacy after all. Will these insurances use the data to help you to improve your health? What if health insurance companies will use this data to determine your claim, or to change their policy?
The thing is that we grow up with these new technologies and it all makes common sense to us. We give them incredible amounts of information by using all of these ‘innovative technical devices’ and that is something to be aware of. Sometimes it is your own choice to provide organizations with personal information, sometimes not and sometimes you do it without even knowing probably. I personally think that all this personal data is not necessarily a bad thing; we can do wonderful things with the information! We might create new insights in society, the human body of our behavior, this would be a perfect scenario. But this information in the wrong hands can be a problem. I just think that we need to be aware of this but I am very curious to your opinions and experiences with this!
Literature:
Uckelmann, D., (2008), A Definition Approach to Smart Logistics, Berlin: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/partner-zone-brand-union/smartwatches-game-changing-technology
http://tweakers.net/nieuws/97989/kwaadwillenden-kunnen-op-afstand-data-van-pebble-smartwatch-verwijderen.html
