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Will Users Get a Slice of the "Big Data" Pie?
curtwoodward writes "Better healthcare, more efficient government, cheaper goods and services — it's all possible in the age of 'big data.' According to the big companies hoping to make a killing off all that information, anyway. But will the people generating that valuable data — Joe and Jane Consumer — ever get a piece of the action? A few startups are trying to establish first-party marketplaces for personal data, compensating users directly for contributing high-quality information about themselves. The World Economic Forum is also involved, hoping that one day, 'a person's data would be equivalent to their money ... controlled, managed, exchanged and accounted for just like personal banking services operate today.' But some entrepreneurs think it might be too late in the developed world, where a consumer's data fingerprint is already very well documented."
No.
Big data is nothing but a scam. No one will ever make money from this data, except the people who sell it.
The purchasers are suckers, just like people who pay spammers to send spam.
You know, my BS meter is starting to get attuned to go off anytime I see 'Big ' used as a proper noun.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
If "'a person's data would be equivalent to their money ... controlled, managed, exchanged and accounted for just like personal banking services operate today.'" is the optimistic-pie-in-the-sky vision of the future, I think it's safe to say that we are 100% fucked.
Financial services is not... exactly... a shining beacon of customer service, egalitarian contracting, and transparency, and the deal gets worse the smaller your scale. If that's the ideal, the outcome seems likely to be grim indeed.
No.
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Instead of giving me a piece of the action - give me the option not to be part of the action in the first place. My privacy and ownership of my own data and control over who can have it and do what with it is infinitely more valuable than a couple dollars.
Discounts on groceries, gasoline, hotels, airline flights, free meals, free email, social network accounts, streaming music, streaming TV. We're getting compensated for our data, and those who do not participate are both less compensated and less tracked.
Now, if you're wondering whether individuals will become the sellers of their data for their financial gain - no. The value in data is in large aggregation of both quantitative (age, sex, ethnicity) and qualitative (likes, interests, behaviours) so that groups can be targeted for whatever an entity is looking for. You are not a beautiful jewel in a sea of dull pebbles, and even if you were you're value in paving the road to advertising is just that of a dull pebble. You don't go buy your stone a pebble at a time, you buy it from someone who has a quarry full and can give it to you by the truckload.
The value in personal data lies in the value many have in aggregate (get it - stones, aggregate - Ha!). It's not surprising that we will never find value in our personal data except to us, and those who market will have to have billions of data points. The value isn't great enough to warrant negotiation with every individual.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Individually your data is worth nothing, when summarized it provides trends and statistics, when integrated it can vastly improve the healthcare system and make the government run smoother.
The first market personal data collectors seem like fly by night type people who don't really know what they're doing. I mean the very concept of willingly giving data for money screams put your best foot forward, greatly skewing the data and making it worthless.
Google has already tried this.
Roses Are Red,
Violets Are Blue,
Milk, Eggs, Coffee.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I actually agree with this to an extent and would mod you up had I points.
A lot of the alleged "intelligence" being pulled out of big data are merely correlational and of a unscientific sampling at that- example the bullshit about which states are unhappiest based on people's Twittering .
Upon this, as upon the credit default swaps and derivatives, an entire "science" of "big data" will be built. The chief and only certain beneficiaries will be the horseshit factories that churn this out out to the mathematically illiterate and experientially provincial.
In fact, since the data cannot be assumed to normally distributed and the variables in question independent of anything, including each other, most of mathematics CANNOT be used to analyze this data still less to predict future states of any system reified - and presumed to really exist- from that data.
Never mind though. Rest assured the asshole quants on working the case even now because while no KNOWLEDGE can be derived from it, a fuck of a lot of money sure can be had.
Still big data is interesting in some limited context and can be applied in useful ways to the betterment of applications, for instance.
But that's not what we're all about, is it ? We're all about putting some lipstick on that pig and selling it.
If you're the sorting type, it's only a matter of timing any Big Data fungus, er./.. I mean companies, as they crop up.
these companies want your information for free
I would be willing to give them accurate information from free. That would be better than the inaccurate data they have now. Then they could compete to give me what I want, instead of what they think I want. A few months ago, I shopped online for a minivan. The marketers recognized this almost immediately, and I started getting web ads and even paper mail ads. But most of them were very poorly targeted. They tried to sell me SUVs, which I had no interest in, or vans with insufficient seats (I drive a car pool thrice a week for 7 people). Then a week later, I bought the van. Now, months later, I am still getting the ads for vans. I would be really slick if I could tell them the exact criteria I wanted, the best offer I had received so far, and when is my cut off for a final decision. Then they could tailor their offers to me. They would save marketing dollars, and I would save time and get a better deal.
This whole post operates on a narrow definition of Big Data. Big Data could mean, data from the LHC, or data from video analysis, or any number of other things.
I would be really slick if I could tell them the exact criteria I wanted, the best offer I had received so far, and when is my cut off for a final decision. Then they could tailor their offers to me.
But that would never happen. They aren't going to limit their offers to the specific details you give them simply because too many people think they want one thing when they want another, or would want another if they knew about it. If they don't have exactly what you want, or they tell you "here it is" and you don't buy, they don't make a sale. But if they say "here's something like what you asked for..." and you actually like it and buy, they win.
A very trivial anecdote. Two weeks ago I went to a new restaurant. I looked at the menu and based my decision on the descriptions I saw there. After I ordered, I walked by another table and saw what I really wanted. I didn't know I wanted it until I saw it (actually, I thought it was too expensive), and the waiter didn't show it to me based on what I told him I wanted. Had he done so, I'd have bought something that cost almost twice as much and I'd have liked three times better. That's what drives marketing, not trying to meet explicit statements of desire, it's creating desire.
That's what they say,
But it just isn't true.
Roses are red
And apples are too,
But violets are *violet*.
Violets aren't blue!
An orange is orange,
But Greenland's not green.
A pinky's not pink,
So what does it mean?
To call something blue
When it's not, we defile it.
But, ah, what the heck,
It's *hard* to rhyme violet!
Whenever the title to a story on Slashdot is a question, the answer is (almost always) no.
I don't really think so myself. Efficiency is the key thing to making "stuff" more affordable and therefore more ubiquitous. For example, efficiencies in semiconductor fabrication enabled personal computers to be affordable by the average joe, even really poor people, whereas it used to be only the very rich owned them. The same thing can be said for cars and Ford's original Model T.
One key part of this is economies of scale, which means you need to sell large quantities of something in order for it to be affordable by the masses. And subsequently, a key part of that is marketing. Marketing is expensive as hell, and goes into the cost of those goods. If big data makes marketing cheaper, then that savings will eventually (though not immediately) make its way to joe sixpack.
So yes, you as the producer of that data DO benefit, just the benefit isn't obvious.
For another perspective on that, you ought to read Bestiat's parable of the broken window. Basically, when you can save money on an expense, then that money can go towards something more useful elsewhere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
This is exactly how the poor become wealthy. In spite of popular claim, the poor are in fact wealthier than they have ever been. Not by a little, but by a lot. Don't confuse money and income with wealth. By that I mean like what I stated above. It used to be that only the very rich owned cars, later TV's, and then later personal computers, later mobile phones (remember when car phones were neat?). A rich person from yesterday would be envious of the wealth that a poor person has today.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/john-stossel-on-the-poor-americas-poor-live-better-than-most-have-lived-through-history/
TL;DR and summary: I have a hard time seeing big data as being a scam, but rather as being a benefit. You may lose a bit of privacy, but I don't think it's enough to satisfy say a nosy neighbor. And before the accusations fly; no, I'm not a paid shill. Hell, I wish I were, because then I could get paid to muse about something I already believed in anyways.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
but the huge increases in efficiency will put lots of people out of work, and the money saved will look lovely in some 1%ers bank account. Plus as there are fewer and fewer jobs we'll fight harder and harder amongst ourselves for them. Sure, the world needs ditch diggers. Well, one guy to fix the 20,000+ robot ditch diggers anyway...
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Say that to Amazon. After they started using their own data, they disbanded their entire staff of experts for recommendations. The computer algorithms were giving three times more sales and costing a fraction of the price of the salaries of the experts.
Say that to Google. When they made their translate program, they didn't use experts but used web-pages to learn translation. Or the auto-completion of queries. Or even pagerank itself.
Unscientific sampling? Big data is about the opposite of sampling. Sampling is a subset of big data. Before, statistics was hypothesis testing but big data is about lots and lots of automated hypothesis testing. The mathematics and statistics is basically the same. Why can't data be assumed to be normally distributed? If you have big data, you can just plot the damn thing or measure how close to normal it is. You know what the cure for analyzing data that is not independent is, yes more data for more complex tests across groups.
In fact, big data has shown to be a better predictor than experts in many fields. See Amazon's voice, IBM Watson and google translate. The limitations of big data is the same as for the conventional hypothesis testing and probably it's being conducted by statistically illiterate CS people.
Productivity of the average American worker went through the roof since 1979:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speedup-americans-working-harder-charts
http://www.ibtimes.com/us-worker-productivity-rising-faster-wage-growth-1114871
Did your inflation-adjusted paycheck? Oh hell no, you're (the average American ) treading water.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3220
http://www.businessinsider.com/corporate-profits-just-hit-an-all-time-high-wages-just-hit-an-all-time-low-2012-6
and have been for decades... DECADES
OK then. All this cost savings is pocketed by billionaires , not passed on to you. The ONLY form in which it's ever passed on to ordinary people is at their own expense, e.g. Walmart prices and Walmart
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/06/03/1213437/-What-Walmart-Costs-Taxpayers
http://www.walmarteffectbook.com/
So if you want to realize what any of the productivity gains / cost savings you've worked for and created, start a company, force everyone who works for you be to be part time, steal the benefits of THEIR increase in productivity, lobby your congresspig for tax breaks for the wealthy..... oh and shop at Walmart.
America is a nation of by and for billionaires, who fund our elections, occupy our political offices, write our laws and own our media. They do this for their own benefit and anything which does not effect their personal lives is not *real* and doesn't matter.
http://video.pbs.org/video/2296684923/
So no- it's not for you.
Now get back to work.