“Big data” is creating a surveillance economy

While governments are capturing as much data as they can about us for security reasons, private companies are doing the same in a practice that has become known as “Big Data”. Martin Hirst (p.19) explains how the data we generate is leading to a “surveillance economy” in which businesses build data profiles that enable them to target their advertising at people more effectively, while Benjamin Shiller (p.22) explains how your online purchasing decisions will enable merchants to alter their prices to extract the maximum value from individual customers.