Big data for the people: it's time to take it back from our tech overlords


Blog 3: Big data for the people: it's time to take it back from our tech overlords

Amy Le 黎草嵋
D0731311
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/14/tech-big-data-capitalism-give-wealth-back-to-people

A small number of companies have become extraordinarily rich by harvesting our data. But that wealth belongs to the many.

Google knows you’re pregnant. Spotify knows your favorite throwback jams.
Is this convenient or creepy? It depends. One minute, you’re grateful for the personalized precision of Netflix’s recommendations. The next, you’re nauseated by the personalized precision of a Facebook ad.

Big data has been around for a while, but our discomfort with it is relatively recent. The election of Donald Trump punctured many powerful fictions, among them the belief in the beneficence of the tech industry. There is now greater public awareness of how a handful of large companies use technology to monitor and manipulate us.

This awareness is a wonderful thing. But if we want to channel the bad feelings swirling around tech into something more enduring, we need to radicalize the conversation. It’s good that more people see a problem where they didn’t before. The next step is showing them that the problem is larger than they think.

Big data is not confined to the cluster of companies that we know, somewhat imprecisely, as the tech industry. Rather, it describes a particular way of acquiring and organizing information that is increasingly indispensable to the economy as a whole. When you think about big data, you shouldn’t just think about Google and Facebook; you should think about manufacturing and retail and logistics and healthcare.

Understanding big data, then, is crucial for understanding what capitalism currently is and what it is becoming – and how we might transform it.

Data is the new oil, says, everyone. The analogy has become something of a cliché, widely deployed in media coverage of the digital economy.

But it’s a useful comparison – more useful, in fact, than people realize. Because thinking of data as a resource like oil helps illuminate not only how it functions, but how we might organize it differently.
Big data is extractive. It involves extracting data from various “mines” – Facebook, say, or a connected piece of industrial equipment. This raw material must then be “refined” into potentially valuable knowledge by combining it with other data and analyzing it.

Technology helps set the parameters of possibility. It frames our range of potential futures, but it doesn’t select one for us. The potential futures framed by big data have a particularly wide range: they run from the somewhat annoying to the very miserable, from the reasonably humane to the delightfully utopian. Where we land in this grid will come down to who owns the machines, and how they’re used – a matter for power, and politics, to decide.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Big Data Can Boost Weather Forecasting

張岳庭 D0741017 Source:  https://www.wired.com/insights/2013/02/how-big-data-can-boost-weather-forecasting/ Considering the number of variables involved and the complex interactions between these variables, weather forecasting has always been extremely challenging. The significant increase in data collection and processing capabilities has greatly improved the ability of weather forecasters to pinpoint the time and severity of hurricanes, floods, snowstorms and other weather events. Globally, more and more evidence of climate change is prompting governments and scientists to take action to protect people and property from its effects. But to take effective measures, they need to know more about the weather-from everything that will happen tomorrow to what will happen next year. According to the professor of economics and finance , Alan Anderson, PhD , “Example of an application of big data to weather forecasting is IBM’s Deep Thunder. Unlike many weather forecasting systems...
Read more

How Big Data is Changing the Production Industry

Blog#4 : How Big Data is Changing the Production Industry Name : Aileen 蔣慧玲 Student ID : D0726917 Source :   https://www.productionhub.com/blog/post/how-big-data-is-changing-the-production-industry Information technology plays a major role in Hollywood. Producers have to use big data analytics to get the right consumers and communicate with them well. Big data technologies will help filmmakers figure out the best ways to share their ideas and deliver messages, develop movies and content that involve ethical and societal issues. Therefore, information that we can get from the help of big data can help filmmakers make key decisions. Big Data is Changing the Production Game Big data technology can help filmmakers to connect and engage with consumers more directly using social media, mobile devices and traditional advertising outlets. Using this technology, producers can develop promotions that reaches the right consumer at the right time. It is not enough just to mainta...
Read more

Big Data case study: 5 relevant examples from the airline industry

D0740712 Connie  吳霈晴 Website: https://blog.datumize.com/5-relevant-examples-of-a-big-data-case-study-from-the-airline-industry With the summer vacation coming, travel is the one that people love to do during vacation, especially long vacation, going abroad may be the first choice for many travelers. So this makes me think of what is the relationship between big data and airplanes? How will it apply on the airline industry? This article tells about the benefits of big data on airlines, which covers three main advantages. 1.      Smarter maintenance 2.      Safer flights 3.      Improve service The first one includes the fuel of airplane, by analyzing and predicting, the article takes some specific airplane company as an example, giving the real number and how much they save the cost. Second, safety. Like this kind of transportation has a higher risk to take, if have the big data’s help, th...
Read more