Technology Undermining Individuality

As technology changed the way data can be tracked it can be argued that it takes away the identity of the individual person. The division of postal codes and then the mapping of postal codes has clumped an area of people and generalized their interests. This does not stop with marketing via mail sent to your home, it is also seen in your local grocery store. When signing up for your local rewards card the store asks for your address and zip code. Upfront this may seem like nothing, as you’ll see savings once you have the card, but in reality these stores are using this information to target certain products and price them to maximize their profits. The stores are exploiting the customers while generalizing the consumer. The customer is no longer an individual person, but a number in a cluster of statistics. This further suggests that technology takes away the meaning as people’s interest are generalized and people are broken down to just statistical numbers.

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