We are ending the week with this sobering view of technology from Connie of the library’s Outreach Services Division.
I was watching a TV show called Blacklist when the main character started talking about “Big Data” and how someone with the right skills can find out just about anything about anybody and track them. I had only a vague idea what this meant.
What is “Big Data” and why should we care? I turned to the library for answers.
The authors of Big Data interpret this to mean processing vast amounts of stored data very quickly in a way that can’t be done on a smaller scale. Algorithms applied to this data have a predictive capability that will “change markets, organizations, the relationship between citizens and governments and more.”
This book develops that concept in a very understandable way with interesting examples of how our world had already changed by the large amount of data stored.
A positive example of the way big data has already helped consumers is Farecast, which predicts when air fare will be cheapest to buy. And future ways big data may benefit humanity is by predicting where outbreaks of disease will occur.
The negative implications of the predictive quality of “Big Data” are thought provoking (think of the movie Minority Report). Not only does everything we do on the Internet never go away, but that information can be analyzed over and over again for different purposes without our knowledge or consent. Even if the data is anonymized, it can still be traced back to a single individual!
The authors state that the amount of data will continue to grow along with our ability to process it. It is “the dark side of big data” that I found most alarming – more surveillance of our lives, less protection of privacy, and loss of anonymity. I found myself marking sections in the book and going back to re-read it. It also sparked a lot of discussion in my book group. Technology is a part of all our lives whether we love it or hate it and this book was a fascinating peek into our future.
Check the WRL catalog for Big Data
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Great description of this book, it sounds really interesting. The big data topic is fascinating, and as you say, seems to have both negative and positive features. An interesting new book I read on big data is called Reality Mining, written by Nathan Eagle and Kate Greene (I’m going to review it on my site soon). It’s based on what will occur in the future, and the authors make a number of recommendations for how big data could be used in ways that are positive for individuals.
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