Name: Big Data
ISBN: 9781472920072

Timandra Harkness

Originally published in hardcover in 2016 by Bloomsbury Sigma.

Does Size Matter?

Big Data

"Timandra Harkness cuts through the hype to put data science into its real-life context using a wide range of stories, people, and places to reveal what is essentially a human science--demystifying big data, telling us where it comes from and what it can do. 'Big Data' then asks the awkward questions: What are the unspoken assumptions underlying its methods? Are we being bamboozled by mega data's size, its speed, and its shiny technology? Nobody needs a degree in computer science to follow Harkness's exploration of what mega data can do for us--and what it can't or shouldn't. 'Big Data' asks you to decide: Are you a data point, or a human being?"--Provided by publisher.

Big data knows where you've been and who your friends are. It knows what you like and what makes you angry. It can predict what you'll buy, where you'll be the victim of crime and when you'll have a heart attack. Big data knows you better than you know yourself, or so it claims. But how well do you know big data? You've probably seen the phrase in newspaper headlines, at work in a marketing meeting, or on a fitness-tracking gadget. But can you understand it without being a Silicon Valley nerd who writes computer programs for fun? Yes, you can. Timandra Harkness writes comedy, not computer code. The only programs she makes are on the radio. If you can read a newspaper, you can read this book. Starting with the basics--what IS data? And what makes it big?--Timandra takes you on a whirlwind tour of how people are using big data today: from science to smart cities, business to politics, self-quantification to the Internet of Things. Finally, she asks the big questions about where it's taking us; is it too big for its boots, or does it think too small? Are you a data point or a human being? Will this book be full of rhetorical questions? No. It also contains puns, asides, unlikely stories and engaging people, inspiring feats and thought-provoking dilemmas. Leaving you armed and ready to decide what you think about one of the decade's big ideas: big data.--From dust jacket.

does size matter?

Big data

Tim Pendry

This is a rather lightweight journalistic introduction to 'big data' but it might be useful to anyone who really has no idea what it is or what it may mean for our society. It probably need not have been so lightweight since Harkness is clearly a sensible, measured and intelligent commentator. One feels a tentative proposal from someone still learning their way around the field reached a somewhat relaxed and possibly cynical publishing house who wanted to get something 'witty' out into the popular market. It isn't really very witty and the good stuff gets buried by the attempt. The book does get better from section to section - a weak, over-simple and even obscure history of computerised information (albeit with insights), a central section of case studies that look cobbled together on a travel budget, then some genuinely thoughtful and sensible public policy discussion. I suspect my mild irritation with the book comes from the lack of helpful editing for Harkness. The attempt to be comedic is largely unfunny, falters and largely disappears after the first section. It is as if she was encouraged to be light hearted when really her intent was more serious than that. The other irritation is the constant translation of British terms into 'American' for an American audience, betraying straight away the probability that this book quickly became the creature of a publisher intent on American sales. The momentum was lost. It appears to lack authenticity. Still, these are irritants. Some praise is due as well. Her final section covering surveillance, our identity and our humanity in a big data society is written with intelligence, humanity and a justifiable scepticism about the claims of Big Data and about whether its masters can be trusted. The point that I take home and readers should take home is that algorithms are not necessarily true reflections of reality and that over-reliance on them can create apparently self-fulfiling prophecies and stereotyping that may create far more problems than they solve in the long run. My own view for some time now has been that, for all its undoubted beneficial uses, it is a technology, like drones, that contains many dangers and, worse, that the special marketing and governmental interests promoting it are often seeking to manipulate and control us. Until wise democratic politicians (do they honestly exist any more?) step in and create legislative and regulatory processes that put these special interests back in their box, I would be highly cautious about gifting too much data to a potentially highly manipulative set of actors. I sense that Harkness, in her reading and work, has come to a similarly cautious view so that it is a shame that the book's rigour and questioning appears so late and that the special interest of a publisher appears to have taken so much control of the narrative. We needed more analysis. There is a sensible short appendix on how to manage your own privacy which will not say anything startling to the knowledgeable but may assist in what is really required at this time - the political education of the mass of voters about technological change and who owns it. We are in revolutionary times - new technologies of war and manipulation appear in a population that has become distrustful and cynical. The temptation of elites is to use 'big data' to try and reassert control, failing to realise that their latest wheeze is no more reliable than its input. The same mindset that once used quantification to try and win wars (we think of Vietnam but also the insane autistic machine logic of the Cold War) is returning with a depressingly adolescent belief in a toy, at least a toy when it comes to describing reality and creating effective policy. The marketing use of Big Data is relatively more benign but it can be gamed and it operates, like technology in war, as something where the lead lasts only so long unless you throw more and more money at something that offers diminishing returns. Eventually the mammals (that's us) will take over from the dinosaurs (that's them) ...

Big Data Does Size Matter?

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