Not A Blog™

Postmodernism is a very fascinating subject to me. In the future, there’s a chance I’ll be writing about it more often. As a concept, it applies to any area of life you can consider, and its effects are felt further than many people realize.

Specifically, the concept of metadata is a postmodern one. Naturally I’m not talking about postmodernism as it relates to a reaction against absolute truths. This is how it is commonly understood and—while the definition I use isn’t necessarily independently derived—it is not the intent to describe metadata in this context.

By postmodern, I’m referring to the rather narrow definition of something that describes the fragmentation and self-referential nature of one’s personal environment. In particular, metadata. Metadata is data about data. ID3 tags within MP3s are metadata: data describing what the MP3 is about. This is used to organize the MP3s into a system that makes it easiest for the user to find. This can be considered postmodern on another level entirely. The system which the metadata is used to create is by no means a universal system, and may work much better for one person, while making no sense to the next. Carrying this to its conclusion—though it is outside the scope of this essay—neither system is inherently correct or incorrect, better or worse.

In the same way music has metadata, you also have metadata, in the sense that “you” constitutes a set of data. I’m sure there are many people who will disagree with my reductionistic view of mashing the complex nature of a person into something mindless like data, but bear with me. I don’t mean it in any sort of malicious—or philosophical—way, but as a matter of convenience in discussion.

Currently, there is a set of metadata about you: age, height, weight, gender, etc. This is data that describes you. In another sense, this is data that describes something that is more than the sum of its data—and therefore can be considered metadata, too, without reducing you to data.

The point is that there is a set of facts about you in the world. Now, what I’m about to say right now is what makes this article fundamentally postmodern.

You are not the owner of the data about you.

Read that again, because it’s huge. You do not own the data that describes you. You may still be thinking along this lines I mentioned earlier—age, height, etc.—but that’s missing the point. What is more important is your social security number and its metadata.

There is a set of data in the world that describes you to other people. This data is not inconsequential. It is used in determining rather major events in your life. For example, whether or not you can buy a house. Not only do you not own this data about yourself, you’re not even allowed to look at it.

Here is where I’m going to make a radical departure from what is commonly accepted as the norm. I believe it is a fundamental right—the same way freedom of speech is a right, and the same way freedom of religion is a right—I believe that it is a right that you own your own metadata. This is a major shift in the way we view ourselves.

So what are the problems with taking such a position? First of all, the companies that collect and sell metadata will be the first to complain that making said metadata public will undermine their business model. This is true. But simply collecting metadata about a person does not mean that you own it. Arguably, compensation is in order for the time spent accumulating that information—and this is what other companies are paying for, so under ideal circumstances, the issue of owning metadata would never arise. But these same companies have been so lax in policing their own databases for errors that it has allowed the system to be taken advantage of by criminals to a ridiculous extent. In this case, a person’s civil liberty to own their own data is more important than the profit of any corporation. This is your right.

Secondly, an individual is not ignorant of the sort of financial history he’s had. If you’ve overdrawn a checking account or defaulted on a loan, you will know about it. It’s the information contained in the file that you don’t know about which causes problems. As an example of this, someone using their name with your social security number does not raise red flags. It does not prevent a transaction from going through and it does not prevent credit from being issued. What it does is create an additional piece of information in the database noting that this social security number has multiple names. That’s it. There is no control or accountability here from the aggregator because, after all, they’re just collecting the information, not verifying that it’s accurate. Verifying the accuracy of data about you is something you should be able to do at any time. This is your right.

Thirdly, being able to verify and control your own metadata would greatly reduce identity theft. Clearly the aggregators are not aiding this fight as much as they could be, but who’s to blame them? Again, they’re not responsible to police the data. But when you can see clearly there is a problem and bring an organization to task for using false data, a line of recourse becomes available to fight mistakes. At present, this does not exist; one can only file paperwork and hope that the corporations affected take you at your word and bother to do something about it. Not to mention that it would save these same corporations millions of dollars each year. You should have swift recourse against crimes committed in your name. This is your right.

Fourthly, what sort of control on metadata does ownership entail? At the very least, it entails complete and unrestricted access at any time, for free. I’m not suggesting that a person always has a right to know what others are saying about them. This is absurd, not to mention unenforceable. But metadata that can be sold is metadata that has value. If your data is valuable enough to be sold from one corporation to another, it is valuable enough for you to view at any time, in full. This is your right.

Finally, the ownership of metadata implies greater supervision than simply accessing it. It implies control. One should be able to specify the way one’s own metadata is used, and how it is accessed. In other words, if you only want your metadata to be released with a signature on paper, filed in triplicate, so it shall be. Some will argue that this would make some transactions prohibitively difficult: large purchases online, perhaps. However that is not their decision to make, it is the consumer’s. Naturally you could refuse access to your metadata to any company, and in return that company can refuse you their service. But how and when and with what authorization your metadata is accessed is something you should decide. This is your right.

It is important to note at this point that there is a certain amount of metadata which is public information. Your address, for example, is nothing secret. Sensitive, perhaps, but not impossible to find. Neither is your phone number, in many cases. But the metadata which causes the most problems today is the metadata that consumers do not have access to—and it is this that they own.

Personal ownership of data or information is not something people would have considered even ten years ago. How much less could this right be accounted for during the founding of our country? We live in a postmodern day: a day where information is as valuable as—if not more valuable than—physical property. It is not enough to simply pass basic legislation regulating data aggregators. This is something which needs to be amended to the constitution itself: to sit alongside your freedom of speech, your right to privacy, your right to vote.

To own valuable information about yourself: this is your right.

-Ted