The New Capital of Big Data

Is there anyone that believes that we still have a measure of privacy? Not only are there cameras everywhere, not only is big data a part of almost every business, but the uses of this data, not by the NSA, but by corporate America, are becoming ever more sophisticated.

After all, it’s what we say we want. Better customer service, better consumer satisfaction and greater personalization. After all, when you look up something on Amazon or Google and then you see ads for that item within seconds, on every website you visit, maybe it seems to go a bit too far.

No place is better at this, particularly in the bricks and mortar world, than Las Vegas. A place where money and service are as one, where loyalty still seems to matter and where the world of tech and the world of touch come together, as in few other places.

This is the backdrop for an Adam Tanner's look at big data, in What Stays in Vegas: The World of Personal Data—Lifeblood of Big Business—and the End of Privacy as We Know It.

My conversation with Adam Tanner:

Big Data

We know that companies like Amazon have vast amounts of data on our purchases and that they use it in order to recommend other products to us; just as Netflix can recommend our movies. But imagine aggregating millions of pieces of medical data, all with their genomic information, so that our generic profile can, with a high degree of probability, tell us what diseases we might get and how to treat them.    Think about how Google was able to head off a worldwide flu pandemic by aggregating vast amount of search data about flu.

This is the kind of data that can tell when we will be sick, even before we know it; or when our car will need service, even before it breaks down. Or, as in the movie Minority Report, data that can predict who will be a criminal, even before the crime is committed. These are just a few of thing we should be thinking about with respect to what’s referred to today as big data.

Ken Cukier is the data editor of the Economist and takes a look at these issues in Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think.  

My conversation with Ken Cukier:

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