Leaving a digital trail is somewhat disturbing to me; however, in some cases I agree that it could be a huge benefit. For example, the “Personal Environmental Impact Report” discussed in the article is a great tool for those who live in the Los Angeles area. My dad grew up in Redlands, California where he was a member of the swim team. They had practice after school in the afternoons when the air quality was terrible. He has told me that there were times after practice that he found it hard to breath. Rather than simply looking into the sky to see if it was full of smog, the coach could access the web service “Personal Environmental Impact Report” to decide just how bad the air quality is and possibly change the team’s workout.
I believe using digital trails of individuals is a more complex situation. As Dr. Estrin points out in the article, “the project still faced a host of challenges, both with the accuracy of tiny sensors and with the researchers’ ability to be certain that personal information remains private.” Individual privacy is a huge problem today and I think it should be carefully monitored so that the individual remains undisclosed. Using digital trails for research is one thing but I do not agree with tracking an individual person’s habits without their consent.
This article reminded me a lot of "Little Brother" and how technology was used to heavily to track the kids in that book. Like I said, it's really disturbing to think that all this information can be used to track us and know the intimate details of our lives, but it can also somewhat come in handy.
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