Tatto-like Skin sensors could improve elderly, community, prenatal health

mitsloan.mit.edu

18 points·jimsojim··6 comments

It looks like the link is broken.

https is definitely broken; http seems to work. Had to turn off https everywhere for this link.

> For instance, he said, sensors could transmit body signals to the wearer’s mobile phone and up to the cloud.

I definitely want to be advertised to based on the minute-to-minute condition of my body.

Let's be clear about it: sensors are fine, and so is collecting and analyzing data from them. It's the cloud-based business model that's the problem.

I completely agree - but I'm inherently distrustful of automatically uploading this data to the cloud, vs. doing local computation. How can I trust a company to keep my data private and secure?

I'm distrustful too. Actually, the litmus test I use for cloud companies is: is the data in practice mine or theirs? In case of sensors - can I grab the data log for myself? Export it to CSV, or at least an Excel file? If they offer a helpful "analytics" platform, do I get to upload the data I previously exported? Do I get to export the results of the analysis?

If the answer to some of those questions is "yes", then I can believe the company wants to provide me value. Otherwise it's a clear signal they just care about extracting value from me. Most of the cloud startups fail this test, therefore I refuse to use (or even get interested in using) their "service".

Notably, the one company I end up using for everything cloud-related is Dropbox. No surprise there - they simply built "a folder that syncs".

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