The Truth About Data Collection And How “Personal” Your Information Really Is

The practice of data collection began thousands of years before Cambridge Analytica stole 87 million Facebook users personal information. Beginning in Ancient Uganda in 18,000 BCE, tribespeople used the “Ishango Bone” to record and store data.

Modern data collection is traced back to London in 1663. John Graunt ran the first known experiment in statistical data analysis. He tracked mortality information to help combat the bubonic plague. It was not until 1926 that modern data storage, the kind of storage that makes Cambridge Analytica so controversial, was invented. This is where our journey begins…

Nikola Tesla Theorizes The World Will Become A Brain

In 1926 Nikola Tesla made a prediction about the earth that few at the time fathomed could come true. In an interview with Colliers Magazine, the legendary inventor said, “the whole Earth will be converted into a huge brain…A man will be able to carry one [telephone] in his vest pocket.”

Tesla believed that this would be possible because he already considered the world a brain. All the particles surrounding us gather data and communicating together. Two years later Fritz Pfleumer discovered how to magnetically record data, the first step in the realization of Tesla’s prediction.