“Big Data” in the Information Age

In the last six years, “big data” has attracted a lot of public attention from politicians and scholars. The growing interest is in part a response to a series of corporate announcements and public summits on the topic, advocacy efforts by privacy researchers and watchdogs, the Obama Administration’s proposed Blueprint for a Privacy Bill of Rights to protect consumers online, the Snowden revelations about National Security Agency (NSA) Surveillance, the release of various national government reports on the subject, and the announcement of multi-million dollar national initiatives funded by the Obama Administration like the “Big Data Research and Development Initiative” ($200m), among other Executive orders regarding big data, security, and privacy. Despite the attention devoted to this emerging and evolving concept, the discourse on the potential scientific breakthroughs and epistemological paradigm shifts expected to solve societal problems and the proposed economic opportunities “big data” can deliver is limited and lacks theoretical grounding. There are various definitions of “big data.” But most can agree that “big data” is the accumulation of incalculable bits of structured and unstructured data points that are tracked, recorded, and stored by an interconnected and interactive network of digital computer devices in real time; making up a dynamic and massive collection of databases that capture the operation of systems and everyday personal activity that can be linked and mined through advanced computational data analytics, disaggregation and aggregation processing techniques, and re-identification processes. Most analysts (especially professional “data scientists,” corporate and government representatives for big data) emphasize the volume of big data, where quantity is the value. A popular belief is that “big data” is objective, representative, and generalizable because it captures all (n = all). The presumption is clear: The more data there is about everyone and everything the more quality information and knowledge can be produced. Moreover, the easier it will be to create new products and services that will lead to economic growth and development. Likewise, the faster it will be to predict social phenomena and better approach a wide range of societal issues (health care, economic growth, security, etc.) and easier to achieve “data-driven” decision making, compensating for the imperfection of human intuition and biased special interests. However, addressing long-standing social, economic, political, and institutional problems takes more than information, that is, political will, among other factors, is a vital component of positive change. Furthermore, big data is not neutral, and does not adequately reflect or represent all of society. In fact, it is alarmingly incomplete when it comes