Everything is Aggregating Data. That’s Both Good, and Bad
Manage episode 381855010 series 2826672
In the future, all consumer goods in everyday use will gather performance data, aggregated and transmitted through the cloud back to the products’ manufacturers. For the engineers that design those products, the result is a data set to determine the upper and lower limits of performance for critical components, allowing an iterative design process that lets each generation of component and assembly become optimized for performance.
The result is lower cost, and less environmental impact for each component. That’s good, but that data can also be aggregated by marketers to develop a very accurate profile of individuals in a household, to drive advertising. And it's surrendered to those marketers without compensation. Uploading motor performance data in a washing machine to a design engineer is a good trade for consumers, because they get better machines in return. But surrendering data to an advertising agency without compensation, is bad business.
* * *
Want to watch this podcast as a video? End of the Line is available on engineering.com TV along with all of our other shows such as This Week in Engineering, Designing the Future, and, Manufacturing the Future.
163 episodi