Elephant in the glass shop(zz)
2013-11-25
http://www.amazon.com/Big-Data-Revolution-Transform-Think/product-reviews/0544002695/ref=cm_cr_dp_qt_hist_one?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addOneStar&showViewpoints=0
My issue with Big Data is that it does not take big data seriously enough. Although the authors have pedigree (Editor at the Economist; Professor at Oxford) this is not an academic text: it belongs to that category of popular essays that attempt to stimulate debate. Anyone who works with data (e.g. technologists, scientists, politicians, consultants) or questions what will be borne from our age of data affluence may have expectations for this book - unfortunately it falls short on providing any real answer.
The book paints an impending revolution in mighty strokes. The authors claim the impact of data-driven innovations will advance the march of humankind. What they end up presenting is a thin collection of happy-ending business stories -- flight fare prediction, book recommendation, spell-checkers and improved vehicle maintenance. It's too bad the book's scientific champion Google Flu Trends, a tool which predicts flu rates through search queries, has proven so fallible. Last February it forecast almost twice the number of cases reported by the official count of the Center for Disease Control.
Big data will certainly affect many processes in a range of industries and environments, however, this book gestures at an inevitable social revolution in knowledge making (`god is dead'), for which I do not find coherent evidence.
The book correctly points out that data is rapidly becoming the "raw material of business". Many organisations will tap into the new data affluence, the outcome of a long historical process that includes `datafication' (I'll define later) and the diffusion of technologies that have tremendously reduced the costs involved in data production, storage and processing.
So, where's the revolution? The book argues for three rather simplistic shifts.
Read the rest of the piece on the LSE Review of books, at bit. ly/bigdatareview
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