Today in 2016, PBS released a new documentary, “The Human Face of Big Data.”
The most compelling story told in the documentary is about the collection and analysis of data to predict the onset of potentially deadly infection in premature babies.
It’s a story of how more data may lead to better outcomes, in this case even save lives. The term “Big Data” has come to represent in recent years this promise, a potential that can only be realized if we clearly establish what we want to achieve by collecting more data and why more data is better than less data in each particular case.
Unfortunately, in our technology-obsessed world, new technologies and new technology applications tend sometimes to become buzzwords that are hyped, celebrated and often discussed irresponsibly by technology vendors and the media. Unfortunately, “The Human Face of Big Data” by and large falls into this trap, the delusion that we are living a momentous time in history thanks to technology. Going beyond “Big Data,” it is a paean to information technology and computerization, as Jay Walker of TEDMED declares in the film:
“Suddenly the world has a lot more minds connected in the simplest, least expensive possible way to make the world better… I don’t think there’s any question that we are at a moment in human history that we will look back on in fifty or a hundred years and we’ll say right around 2000 or so it all changed.”
I’ll go out on a limb and venture to predict that a hundred years from now, the time around 2000 will be marked by Americans’ loss of the security they have enjoyed since the end of the Second World War, not by the rise of the internet. A loss of security that led the U.S. Federal Government, believing in the power of Big Data, on a foolish hunt for a “needle in a haystack” and the illegal collection of data on all U.S. citizens.
And it will be clear to most observers, as it is clear to many today, that some of the additional minds that are now connected to the internet, do not see it as a tool “to make the world better.” They may see it that way but I’m guessing Walker probably doesn’t agree with their definition of “a better world.”
The lack of diversity in the voices and opinions heard in the film, its relentless emphasis on accentuating the positive and the speculative—the two segments discussing the negative aspects of Big Data last a total of 7 minutes—is particularly astonishing given that there has been no shortage of intelligent discussions of the potential pitfalls in the rush to collect and analyze data.
The missed opportunities are compounded by outright fiction. Here is some of the data we discover in this documentary (and the accompanying PBS’ web page) about Big Data:
· All the data processing we did in the last 2 years is more than all the data processing we did in the last three thousand years;
· We are now being exposed to as much information in a single day as our 15th century ancestors were exposed to in their entire lifetime;
· Every two days the human race is now generating as much data as was generated from the dawn of humanity through the year 2003.
Really? Which Big Data time-machine tells us exactly how much “information” and “data” and “data processing” there was in the last 3000 years or the 15th century or at the dawn of humanity?
The impression the film makers wanted to leave with the viewer is summarized by John Battle and quoted in the press release: “The era of Big Data is an important inflection point in human history and represents a critical moment in our civilization’s development.”
The theme of we-are-living-in-a-historic-moment-because-of-technology-and-we-have-to-make-critical-decisions-because-it-may-turn-negative-but-let’s-accentuate-the-positive-and-convince-everyone-this-technology-is-going-to-change-the-world has been the hallmark of technology talk for a while, moving rapidly from one hype cycle (“Big Data”) to the next (“Artificial Intelligence”), with little connection to reality. There’s no escape from this escapist, technology-centric, U.S.-centric myth-making, shared and promoted by the global chattering classes.
The computer—and its data—have brought many changes to our lives, but has not changed much what drives us, what makes humans tick. Among many other things, it has not influenced at all, it could not have influenced at all, the all-consuming desire for prestige and status, whether as individuals, groups or nations.