Danah boyd, founder of the critical Big Data think/do tank Data and Society, writes about the work she did with the White House on Big Data: Seizing Opportunities, Preserving Values [PDF]. Boyd and her team convened a conference called The Social, Cultural & Ethical Dimensions of “Big Data” (read the proceedings here), and fed the conclusions from that event back […]
Writing in the Financial Times, Tim Harford (The Undercover Economist Strikes Back, Adapt, etc) offers a nuanced, but ultimately damning critique of Big Data and its promises. Harford’s point is that Big Data’s premise is that sampling bias can be overcome by simply sampling everything, but the actual data-sets that make up Big Data are anything but comprehensive, and are […]
Outstanding social scientist danah boyd has founded a new thinktank (or “think/do-tank”) called The Data & Society Research Institute, based in New York City, and devoted to critical analysis of big data, and “social, technical, ethical, legal, and policy issues that are emerging because of data-centric technological development.” It’s well-funded, with an exciting mission, and they’re hiring.
Data & Society is […]
