Alex Woodie in Can’t Ignore the Big Data Revolution draws our attention to: Big Data Revolution by Rob Thomas and Patrick McSharry.
Not the first nor likely the last book on “big data,” but it did draw these comments from Thomas Hale:
Despite all the figures, though, the revolution is not entirely quantified after all. The material costs to businesses implied by installing data infrastructure, outsourcing data management to other companies, or storing data, are rarely enumerated. Given the variety of industries the authors tackle, this is understandable. But it seems the cost of the revolution (something big data itself might be inclined to predict) remains unknown.

The book is perhaps most interesting as a case study of the philosophical assumptions that underpin the growing obsession with data. Leaders of the revolution will have “the ability to suspend disbelief of what is possible, and to create their own definition of possible,” the authors write.Their prose draws heavily on similar invocations of technological idealism, with the use of words such as “enlightenment”, “democratise”, “knowledge-based society” and “inspire”.
Part of their idea of progress implies a need to shift from opinion to fact. “Modern medicine is being governed by human judgment (opinion and bias), instead of data-based science,” state the authors.
Hale comes close but strikes short of the mark when he excuses the lack of data to justify the revolution.
The principal irony of this book and others in the big data orthodoxy is the lack of big data to justify the claims made on behalf of big data. If the evidence is lacking because big data isn’t in wide use, then the claims for big data are not “data-based” are they?
The claims for big data take on a more religious tinge, particularly when readers are urged to “suspend disbelief,” create new definitions of possible, to seek “enlightenment,” etc.
You may remember the near religious hysteria around intelligent agents and the Semantic Web, the remnants of which are still entangling libraries and government projects who haven’t gotten the word that it failed. In part because information issues are indifferent to the religious beliefs of humans.
The same is the case with both the problems and benefits of big data, whatever you believe them to be, those problems and benefits are deeply indifferent to your beliefs. What is more, your beliefs can’t change the nature of those problems and benefits.
Shouldn’t a “big data” book be data-driven and not the product of “human judgment (opinion and bias)”?
Careful readers will ask, hopefully before purchasing a copy of Big Data Revolution and thereby encouraging more publications on “big data” is:
Where’s the big data?
You can judge whether to purchase the volume on the basis of the answer to that question.
PS: Make no mistake, data can have value. But, spontaneous generation of value by piling data into ever increasing piles is just as bogus as spontaneous generation of life.
PPS: Your first tip off that there is no “big data” is the appearance of the study in book form. If there were “big data” to support their conclusions, you would need cloud storage to host it and tools to manipulate it. In that case, why do you need the print book?