The Dictatorship of Data
Big data is poised to transform society, from how we diagnose illness to how we educate children, even making it possible for a car to drive itself. Information is emerging as a new economic input, a vital resource. Companies, governments, and even individuals will be measuring and optimizing everything possible.
But there is a dark side. Big data erodes privacy. And when it is used to make predictions about what we are likely to do but haven’t yet done, it threatens freedom as well. Yet big data also exacerbates a very old problem: relying on the numbers when they are far more fallible than we think. Nothing underscores the consequences of data analysis gone awry more than the story of Robert McNamara.
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Google’s deference to data has been taken to extremes. To determine the best color of a toolbar on the website, Marissa Mayer, when she was one of Google’s top executives before going to Yahoo, once ordered staff to test 41 gradations of blue to see which ones people used more. In 2009, Google’s top designer, Douglas Bowman, quit in a huff because he couldn’t stand the constant quantification of everything.
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