The textbook section “Scale: The Law of Large Numbers” explains how new opportunities and challenges have been created because of the sheer quantity of data that is being produced on the Internet. Computers give us the ability to analyze this data faster than ever before, and the World Wide Web makes it possible for individuals to publish things that may have stayed private in earlier time periods. The challenges, however, lie in the fact that data is being produced faster than we are analyzing it and in the ethical dilemma created when we subject emotionally charged content through the ‘dehumanizing’ process of computer analysis.

I personally welcome the challenges and newfound abilities that the internet has given us. Just as the Law of Large Numbers states that conducting multiple trials of an experiment leads you closer to its mean value, analyzing the large amount of data that we are producing can help us uncover truths about human needs, desires, and aspirations that we may not have discovered before. I don’t believe that algorithmically analyzing data such as Holocaust videos would upset many people. Perhaps what we should be more wary of is the possibility of a person or group using data extracted from the Internet to influence society in a malevolent way.