The Chinese-owned app TikTok has been labelled a national-security threat by the U.S., but it’s not unique in the data it collects. WSJ explains why countries are building digital walls and treating user data like a sovereign asset, and how that could change our tech.
Illustration: Zoë Soriano
The principle behind these technologies is that collecting more data will help make us healthier. The message from experts I spoke with is that there’s potential in that idea, but it hasn’t been fulfilled yet.
NEW YORK TIMES (August 28, 2020): One big limitation of health devices, though, is that many people don’t know what to do with the data they see about their heart rate or how many hours they slept.
“We’re not doing a very good job of educating people what to do with that information. That’s the piece that’s missing,” said John Jakicic, the director of the Healthy Lifestyle Institute at the University of Pittsburgh. (Side note: For some people, having data on their sleep might actually be counterproductive.)
Public health organizations track the spread of coronavirus and use graphs and charts to visualize the data. WSJ’s Brianna Abbott explains what to look for in the data to understand how the virus is impacting your community.
Photo illustration: Laura Kammermann/WSJ
Boomers Daily 