Proto-Facebook, Proto-Google: Know Everything Virtually Everybody

From the Social Science Research Network:

"'Know Everything that Can Be Known About Everybody': The Birth of the Credit Report"

Abstract

Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 remarkable amount of our personal information is inwards the hands of corporations such every bit the Experian credit bureau; strangers to us, they brand their coin yesteryear collecting our data, processing it as well as selling it to others. Other firms brand decisions shaping our lives on the reason of credit ratings the credit bureaus assign to us. Those companies convey profound touching on on our lives, but nosotros are non their customers as well as convey no command over them. Most of us assume that this dry reason of being, inwards which nosotros abide by ourselves at the mercy of firms whose concern is to procedure as well as sell our information, is a novel affair – a production of the Information Age, credit cards, as well as mainframe computers. In fact, it's much older than that. The storey of the 21st-century credit bureau echoes that of the showtime credit bureau, initially known every bit the Mercantile Agency, founded earlier the Civil War. In a globe inwards which such things were unknown, the Mercantile Agency sought to works life as well as hold a file on every American who mightiness e'er attempt commercial credit. Deeply controversial as well as deeply influential, the Mercantile Agency created an early, computer-free, version of the database system, maintaining as well as updating files on good over a 1000000 people yesteryear 1890. It as well as its rivals pose inwards house a new, pervasive, network of social monitoring that became a fundamental operate of the nation's economical infrastructure. The early on credit bureaus faced roughly of the same issues that the modern ones do, as well as inspired deep privacy fears. Modern privacy constabulary didn't be yet, as well as and hence privacy issues found their means into the constabulary of credit bureaus inwards the context of defamation lawsuits. The resulting defamation representative constabulary displays remarkably modern concerns close the commoditization of information, as well as close the untrammeled distribution of information close individuals. It suggests possibilities inwards the development of the constabulary that ultimately went unrealized.

...But that likewise is non actually new. The Mercantile Agency as well as Bradstreet Company ratings codes were products of the nineteenth century 's anticipation of the dark - box algorithm . Though they were the triggers of (sometimes catastrophic) action, from the scream for of persuasion of the information bailiwick , they were the trial of the agencies' processing unknown facts through an opaque filter. That's operate of what made them as well as hence hard to challenge...

—pp 37

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