“The trail of clicks that internet users leave behind from which value can be extracted”, according to the Economist, in “Data, data everywhere“. The amounts of data being left everywhere nowadays has lead to the use of the term “big data“. This data is analysed by data scientists and aggregated by big business to show up trends.
“Data exhaust” is sometimes called “digital exhaust“.
The Double-Tonged Dictionary is a “lexicon of fringe English”. It covers the term Data exhaust, giving it the Gloss: “the incidental statistics and information that accumulate when people interact with a system, process, or event, such as when tracking visitor interaction on a web site.”
Reading the Economist article left me feeling exhausted by the Big Brother type way in which so much of what we do nowadays is recorded and aggregated into statistics for the use of marketing men or goverments or whoever has access to our data.
When I was browsing recently in a book shop I came across a book about “digital memory” and about the fact that the internet never forgets. It is called “Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age” by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger. The Times Higher Education Supplement reviews it and says “his case against digital memory is humanist. He worries that it will not only change the way we organise society, but it will damage our identities.”
I worry also that the data exhaust that we leave behind us may not disperse and be forgotten, to be replaced by fresh air or a blank sheet, but may lurk around, reappearing from day to day, or from year to year, long after we ourselves have forgotten the original event.
ETYM
Exaust is waste gas left behind as you speed along in your car.
Data exhaust is the trail you leave, showing where you have been, on the internet.
