- How do you think the use of data should be managed so the promise outweighs the perils?
- Whose job is it to do this?
Note: Both of these readings are in the red course notes book.
Friday, 23 September 2011
Week 10: Option 1 - Big Data
In this week's readings, Bryant et al. (2008) see the world as being "data driven" while Bollier (2010) discusses "the promise and perils" of using big data for "nowcasting."
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Reading both these cases, it seems that there are many more benefits to Big Data than perils - really, the main one identified was privacy, however this is such an important issue it can displace many of the benefits.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the use of big data needs to be managed and facilitated by an Industry authority similar to the IEEE, where guidelines on data storage, privacy, mining and analysis and security can be established and overseen.
Such a group would also drive the research and development of this area of technology, and would be closely integrated with industry. This idea meshes with my opinion that many Universities no longer have the appropriate capacity, knowledge, or integration to undertake relevant research into technological areas (Unfortunately, Victoria seems to be a prime candidate regarding this). Any Industry group is funded by, and generates revenue for, it's member companies, and therefore is able to generate revenue channels and opportunities based on this revenue-driven research, and also inherently frames the context of this research in current and future technological tools, and the general direction and needs of the industry.
Whether we like it or not data about us is being collected, shared, bought and sold every second of the day. There is great benefits to this since organisations are able to develop a greater understanding of how to satisfy us the consumer.
ReplyDeleteBut of course the downside to data sharing is the feeling of privacy invasion. Who collects the data? who sees the data? And what do they do with it all?
I don’t think there is a lot we can do about it. Because the internet is such a vast and open source, I don’t think it is possible for all the data in the world to be managed and monitored.
Even if governments put laws in place to ban data sharing behaviour I still think that because of the nature of the internet, data sharing will still occur.
I think this is more of a case of caveat emptor (buyer beware) or in other words the user needs to be responsible and take care with what they do online. Users should be careful with what they enter into sites or what they add to their profiles on social networking sites like Facebook.
I’m really not entirely sure of the technicality behind it, whether it exists already or if it is even possible, but maybe software filters could be developed and installed on users computers that stop sites like amazon from leeching data from every click we make?
At the moment I feel it is extremely difficult to control the flow of data, In the future we may see ways of restricting collection of data.