Big Data

Click here for an article entitled "Living by the Numbers: Big Data Knows What Your Future Holds" by Martin U. Müller, Marcel Rosenbach and Thomas Schulz in Spiegel International Online. It's a long article about how the spectre "Big Brother" is being replaced by "Big Data."

An excerpt:

TomTom, a Dutch manufacturer of GPS navigation equipment, had sold its data to the Dutch government. It then passed on the data to the police, which used the information to set up speed traps in places where they were most likely to generate revenue -- that is, locations where especially large numbers of TomTom users were speeding.

Pre-programmed Conflicts

TomTom's CEO issued a public apology, saying that the company had believed that the government wanted the data to improve traffic safety and reduce road congestion. TomTom had not anticipated the use of the data for speed traps, he said.

Similar conflicts are practically pre-programmed into the technology, especially as a central conflict is inherent in its development. Big Data applications are especially valuable when they are personalized, as in the case of credit checks and individual medicine.