Every Application is An Analytical App

I just read Gartner’s Top 10 Tech Trends for 2015. It’s always fun to read predictions and this list contains all of the usual suspects (the Internet of Things, Cloud, 3D printing, etc.) but number four on the list caught my attention:

Advanced, Pervasive and Invisible Analytics. Every application is an analytical app today.

In a world where notice and consent, the fundamental underpinning of our privacy laws and regulations, isn’t working (e.g. nobody reads privacy policies and when they do they don’t understand them) and regulators are getting more creative and aggressive in the way they hold companies accountable to their actions, what kinds of risks are developers taking when they enable “advanced, pervasive and invisible analytics” in their apps?

The risks are huge. If you don’t believe me ask Google’s Street View team what happens when you collect information from the public in a way that surprises them.

I know Gartner is just pontificating here, and they aren’t the ones to actually implement an app, but didn’t they give this concept even a little bit of consideration?