The original title is 3 Big Data Insights from the Grandfather of Google Glass. The post describes MIT Media Lab Professor Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland as the “Grandfather of Google Glass.”
Let’s review Pentland’s three points to see if my title is more appropriate:
1) Big Data is about people.
SP: Big Data is principally about people, it’s not about RFID tags and things like that. So that immediately raises questions about privacy and data ownership.
I mean, this looks like a nightmare scenario unless there’s something that means that people are more in charge of their data and it’s not something that can be used to spy on them. Fortunately as a consequence of this discussion group at the World Economic Forum, we now have the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights which says you control data about you. It’s not the phone company, it’s not the ad company. And interestingly what that does is it means that the data is more available because it’s more legitimate. People feel safer about using it.
I feel so much better knowing about the “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.” Don’t you?
With secret courts, imprisonment without formal charges, government sanctioned murder, torture, in the United States or at its behest, my data won’t be used against me.
You might want to read Leon Panetta Plays Chicken Little before you decide that the current administration, with its Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights has much concern for your privacy.
2) Cell phones are one of the biggest sources of Big Data. Smart phones are becoming universal remote controls.
….
Not so much in this country but in other parts of the world, your phone is the way you interface through the entire world. And so it’s also a window into what your choices are and what you do.
Having a single interface makes gathering intelligence a lot easier than hiring spies and collaborators.
Surveillance is cheaper in bulk quantities.
3) Big Data will be about moving past averages to understanding patterns at the individual level. Doing so will allow us to build a Periodic Table of human behavior.
SP: We’re moving past this sort of Enlightenment way of thinking in terms of markets and competition and big averages and asking, how can we make the information environment at the human level, at the individual level, work for everybody?
I see no signs of a lack of thinking in terms of markets and competition. Are Apple and Google competing? Are Microsoft and IBM competing? Are the various information gateways competing?
It is certainly that case that any of the aforementioned and others, would like to have everyone as a consumer.
Equality as a consumer for information service providers isn’t that interesting to me.
You?
The universal surveillance that Pentland foresees does offer opportunities for topic maps.
The testing of electronic identities tied to the universal interface, a cell phone.
For a fee, an electronic identity provider will build an electronic identity record tied to a cell phone with residential address, credit history, routine shopping entries, etc.
Topic maps can test how closely an identity matches other identities along a number of dimensions. (For seekers or hiders.)
The quoted post by: Conor Myhrvold and David Feinleib.
I first saw this at KDNuggets.