Opinion: The drive to collect data could lead automakers down a dangerous path – The Globe and Mail

Peter Norton is associate professor of history in the Department of Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia, and the author of Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving.
Big-time investors like to say that “data is the new oil.” Google, Facebook and other companies have drilled the digital oil fields of personal data, achieving rates of growth 20th-century oil barons would have envied.
But to collect personal data, such companies have to present themselves as something else. Google is a data-collection company that offers internet search and other services; Facebook is a data-collection company that offers a social-media platform. To these companies, the services they provide are means to an end – and if the means and the end diverge, the end must prevail.