Re: [telecom] Mystery of Big Data's Parallel Universe Brings Fear, and a Thrill
- From: Bill Horne <bill@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2012 23:13:31 -0400
On Tue, Jun 05, 2012 at 10:04:16PM -0400, Monty Solomon wrote:
Mystery of Big Data's Parallel Universe Brings Fear, and a Thrill
By DENNIS OVERBYE
June 4, 2012
(snip)
It is perhaps time to be afraid. Very afraid, suggests the science
historian George Dyson, author of a recent biography of John von
Neumann, one of the inventors of the digital computer. In "A Universe
of Self-Replicating Code," a conversation published on the Web site
Edge, Mr. Dyson says that the world's bank of digital information,
growing at a rate of roughly five trillion bits a second, constitutes
a parallel universe of numbers and codes and viruses with its own
"physics" and "biology."
There are things going on inside that universe that we don't know
about, he points out - except when it produces unpleasant surprises,
as it did during the "flash crash" of the stock market in May 2010.
And we had better find out what they are.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/05/science/big-datas-parallel-universe-brings-fears-and-a-thrill.html
-or-
http://goo.gl/hXNo3
There are two ways to look at "Big Data": as a change agent that will
improve our lives, or as an Orwellian "Big Brother" menace that
threatens to turn us all into pod people or oppressed, frightened
clerks waiting for the Telescreen to order us to face the music and
proceed MinLove-wise.
I'm bothered that the press seems to be determined to paint any use of
such information as an evil event. The coverage of this, and most
technical issues, is, IMNSHO, intended to induce fear and make the
public want to buy the paper, or watch the TV commercials, instead of
informing us about *BOTH* the positive and negative /possibilities/ of
large databases and the information in them.
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly)
.
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