Big Data

ACCORDING TO Pavolotsky (2013): "Big Data refers to the proliferation in data volumes and types, the dramatic increase in the speed for collecting and processing that data, and the technical solutions to analyze, store, and draw intelligent and actionable inferences from the data" (2013, p. 217). It concerns both data storage and data analysis (Ward and Baker, 2013). Cheaper storage for large amounts of data has popularized the use of big data sets, and technology such as Apache Hadoop can process this data. Big data is both a technical and sociological issue, and conversations around big data tend to draw on the Meta Group's (now called Gartner)'s studies of data which recognized volume, velocity, variety, and veracity. Big data is different than "data" due to the magnitude of data, and regarding the first three V's, big data refers to "the increasing rate at which it is produced and the increasing range of formats and representations employed" Also, regarding veracity, studies of big data are concerned with "questions of trust and uncertainty with regards to data and the outcome of analysis of that data."

ACCORDING TO Jansson and Christensen (2014): Andrejevic (2014) states that important words in big data are "data mining, predictive analytics and sentiment analysis" (p. 95). Baudrillard stated about simulation, "It seems that it would be the radical effectuation, the unconditional realization of the world, the transformation of all out acts, or all historical events, of all material substance and energy into pure information. the ideal would be the resolution of the world b the acuatlization of all facts and data" (1995: 7)" (p. 96).

ACCORDING TO Lyon (2009), "The existence of contemporary surveillance systems in a sense reconnects bodily persons with data about them, by constituting them as high-value consumers, terror suspects, loan defaulters, free-flight eligibles, or whatever. So being 'invisible" (or anonymous for that matter) in a surveillance-saturated world becomes increasingly difficult. Surveillance processes thus contribute to what Haggerty and Ericson dub the 'disappearance of disappearance' (p. 125).

References:

Jansson, A.,& Christensen, M. (Eds.). (2014). Media, surveillance and identity: Social perspective. New York: Peter Lang.

Lyon, D. (2009). Identifying citizens: ID cards as surveillance. Malden: Polity.

Pavolotsky, John. "Privacy in the Age of Big Data." The Business Lawyer 69.1 (2013): 217-25. ProQuest. Web. 14 Apr. 2014.

Ward, Jonathan S., and Adam Baker. "Undefined By Data: A Survey of Big Data Definitions." Cornell University Library, 20 Sept. 2013. Web. 14 Apr. 2014. <http://arxiv.org /abs/1309.5821>.