May 22, 2014

Big Data social context

From Cathy O’Neil: Ignore data, focus on power (and, well, most of the stuff on her blog)

From danah boyd and Kate Crawford: Critical Questions for Big Data

Will large-scale search data help us create better tools, services, and public goods? Or will it usher in a new wave of privacy incursions and invasive marketing? Will data ana- lytics help us understand online communities and political movements? Or will it be used to track protesters and suppress speech? Will it transform how we study human communication and culture, or narrow the palette of research options and alter what ‘research’ means?  

 

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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »

Comments

  • avatar
    Richard Penny

    I particularly liked Cathy O’Neill’s comment “The power is where the data isn’t.” I remember reading some 20 years ago an article that commented that in the future only the well-off would have privacy. In big data it generally ain’t MAR.

    10 years ago