Data Availability

Clearly not all information that is of interest in a DSS is about individuals in society. Some of the information is about governments, corporations, competitors, statutes and legal precedents, and so on. In order for the technology to be used to its fullest, there is a need for the various cultures to share views on how such “public” information should be shared. In the United States, the culture has taken its right to public information from the First Amendment. However, not all countries share this right. Even a country as similar in culture as Canada does not protect this right. This can present a problem if all parties using a DSS cannot have access to the same information. Further it presents questions as to how the statutes and customs apply. For example, if a DSS user is physically in country A but accessing a computer and database in country B, do the laws and precedents of country A hold or do those of country B hold? In other words, is it the individual’s physical location or logical location which dictates which statutes apply? International courts continue to debate these issues.

5Big credit card companies, banks, airlines, and insurers use massively parallel processing in an effort to divine which consumers are likely to buy what products and when. Marketing managers believe this is a great contribution to their efforts. However, one business professor warns the fallout could be that nasty ID companies begin abusing their newfound information: “The companies doing this have a big responsibility.