"big data ethics" entries
Strata Week: Big problems in the age of big data
Big data and big problems, open data monetization, Hortonworks' first year, and a new Hadoop Partner Ecosystem launches
Here are a few stories that caught my attention in the data space this week.
Big data, Big Brother, big problems
Adam Frank took a look at some of the big problems with big data this week over at NPR. Franks addresses issues in analyzing the sheer volume of complex information inherent in big data. Learning to sort through and mine vasts amounts of data to extrapolate meaning will be a “trick,” he writes, but it turns out the big problems with big data go deeper than volume.
Creating computer models to simulate complex systems with big data, Franks notes, ultimately creates something a bit different from reality: “the very act of bringing the equations over to digital form means you have changed them in subtle ways and that means you are solving a slightly different problem than the real-world version.” Analysis, therefore, “requires trained skepticism, sophistication and, remarkably, some level of intuition about the systems we study,” he writes.
Franks also raises the problem of big data becoming a threat to individuals within society:
“Everyday we are scattering ‘digital breadcrumbs’ into the data-verse. Credit card purchases, cell phone calls, Internet searches: Big Data means memory storage has become so cheap that all data about all those aspects of our lives can be harvested and put to use. And it’s exactly the use of all that harvested data that can pose a threat to society.”
The threat comes from the Big Brother aspect of being constantly monitored in ways we’ve never before imagined, and Franks writes, “It may also allows levels of manipulation that are new and truly unimaginable.” You can read more of Franks thoughts on what it means to live in the age of big data here. (We’ve covered related ethics issues with big data here on Strata.)