Big data: A revolution that will transform how we live, work, and think is written by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier. Mayer-Schönberger is the Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford His research focuses on the role of information in a networked economy. He taught for ten years at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Mayer-Schönberger has published seven books, as well as over a hundred articles. He is a personal adviser to the Austrian Finance Minister on innovation policy. Yes, he is an expert. Cukier has as just an impressive resume, Kenneth Cukier is the Data Editor of The Economist. From 2002 to 2004 he was a research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, working on the Internet and international relations. His writings have also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Prospect, The Financial Times and Foreign Affairs, among others. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s global agenda council on data-driven development.
The authors of Big data, are experts in their field. They bring years of experience and vast knowledge to present their case that big data, is going to change our lives, each of us and basically we better get used to it, because the revolution has been going on for years. We as laymen are just now coming to full understanding of how much information has been out there and mined on us. The author’s explain, the data mining has been going on for years but because of the size of data sets available, most of it was not being used. Samples were taken to try and determine patterns and make predictions, and these patterns were used to summarize theories of well, basically everything.
Big data, if we are not careful can be used for bad. Examples, have been given throughout time, but a good example provided by the authors is the escalation of the Vietnam War. They argue the use of data was used to give power to those who were already powerful, “And it was a similar hubris that led the United States to escalate the Vietnam War partly on the basis of body counts, rather than to base decisions on more meaningful metrics” (Mayer 168). Robert McNamara was Secretary of State at the time of the war and later in life admitted many of the statistics used and data assumptions made-were incorrect. Hindsight being what it is, he was still not able to admit data manipulation by powerful people was one of the reasons the United States found itself so entrenched for so long in Vietnam (Mayer 169). If all of the data available at the time had been able to be used to make policy decisions, the authors argue this part of history might have played out a little differently.
The authors explain, it is not so much about the data being big, it is about capturing everything that is available. The processing of data has changed businesses approach to sales, What Big Data realized is it didn’t matter ‘why’…knowing ‘what’ is how you get clients to click and buy (Mayer 52). The authors applaud Google for figuring it out before everyone else. Google started scanning and adding all ‘available’ data to their database long and then let their algorithms figure out how to make sense of it. Messy, dirty- it didn’t matter. What mattered was have all of the information on hand and eventually patterns would emerge, (Mayer 45). Google proved it could be done, and in doing so, they helped change the way we look at information and how it is gathered.
So, as I said, the authors do a great job of explaining and giving examples of how big data works, but I am going to be honest here-it is scary. It is scary to have this much information available out there to anyone who wants to spend a bit of time digging and finding it.
In the article, Big data: are we making a big mistake? Tim Hartford discusses specific examples of some of the downsides of Big Data. One way he explains it is, though the companies like Google and Amazon are analyzing all this data, because they do not share their data sets, how do we know what is being studied. He cautions the reader to not jump too quickly on the bandwagon of the experts, Cukier and Mayer-Schönberger and argues that their theory of N=ALL cannot in fact be true, because we really have no way of ever having all of the information, it’s continuously changing and impossible to capture (Hartford).
Big data, is an interesting book, however I believe it spends too much time talking about all the wonderful things data has to offer us, and not enough time questioning how the intrusion in our private lives is effecting the individual. The ability to manipulate and control our lives, seems a bit disturbing and makes me want to unplug from the internet even more, as I realize how much information they already have.
http://www.cukier.com/knccv.html
Harford, Tim. “Big Data: Are We Making a Big Mistake?” Financial Times. March 28 2014. <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/21a6e7d8-b479-11e3-a09a-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2ziUgQIoH>.
whoknewitwasu 