Metaphors of Big Data

In the essay, I argue that the metaphors currently used to describe “big data” fail to acknowledge the vast variety of vast datasets that are now being collected and processed. I argue that we need new metaphors.

Strangers have long had access to some details about most of us—our names, phone numbers and even addresses have been fairly easy to find, even before the advent of the Internet. And marketers have long created, bought and sold lists that grouped customers based on various differentiating criteria. But marketers didn’t use to have access to, say, our search topics, back when we were searching in libraries, not Googling. The post office didn’t ask us to agree that it was allowed to open our letters and scan them for keywords that would then be sold to marketers that wanted to reach us with more accurately personalized offers. We would have balked. We should balk now.

The link will take you to the piece on the Re/code site, but I hope you’ll come back and respond to it in the blog comments!

November 6, 2015

Photo by Marc_Smith, used without modification under a Creative Commons license.