The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
Today, many of the debates about behavioural control in the age of big data echo Cold War-era anxieties about brainwashing, insidious manipulation and repression in the ‘technological society’. In his book Psychopolitics, Han warns of the sophisticated use of targeted online content, enabling ‘influence to take place on a pre-reflexive level’. On our current trajectory, “freedom will prove to have been merely an interlude.” The fear is that the digital age has not liberated us but exposed us, by offering up our private lives to machine-learning algorithms that can process masses of personal and behavioural data. In a world of influencers and digital entrepreneurs, it’s not easy to imagine the resurgence of a culture engendered through disconnect and disaffiliation, but concerns over the threat of online targeting, polarisation and big data have inspired recent polemics about the need to rediscover solitude and disconnect.
With big data making personal information freely available, the debate on the nature of freedom and the need for privacy has resurfaced.
The passage says that current debates about behavioural control in the age of big data echo Cold War fears of manipulation; Han warns that freedom may prove to have been merely an interlude; the digital age has exposed our private lives to algorithms; and these concerns have revived calls to rediscover solitude and disconnect.
The keyed summary — with big data making personal information freely available, the debate on the nature of freedom and the need for privacy has resurfaced — captures all three strands: big data exposing personal life, the threat to freedom, and the renewed debate (the ‘echo’ of older anxieties and the recent polemics about solitude).
The summary comparing technology’s influence to Cold War manipulation picks up only the opening comparison and leaves out the concern for freedom, privacy and disconnection.
The summary about artificial intelligence putting freedom and privacy at stake introduces AI, which the passage does not discuss, and drops the idea that the debate has returned.
The summary saying digital technology is enslaving us states as fact what the passage presents only as a fear being debated, and it overstates the claim.
Hence, the answer is With big data making personal information freely available, the debate on the nature of freedom and the need for privacy has resurfaced.
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Which one of the options below best summarises the passage?
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Important Questions from Non Grammar
- In formulating Principle VI (a), the ILC clarified the term "waging of a war of aggression" because:
- The author attributes the growing public frustration with the UN primarily to which pair of continuous failures?
- A primary point of divergence between the US Conservative position and the Secretary-General's Conservative position on security matters, according to the summary is:
- According to the critique's conclusion, the immediate, insurmountable barrier preventing the implementation of any reform, major or minor, is:
- The Secretary-General's 'Agenda for Peace' proposed a specific military capability intended to address the gap between traditional peace-keeping and full military action. This proposed unit was explicitly characterized by the summary as being:
