Reinventing Society In The Wake Of Big Data | Conversation | Edge

While on the subject of Big Data, from an earlier post, this interview with Alex Pentland is a riveting read. He explains what big data (or lots of data) really does for those who use it, at the expense of those who don’t really understand the implications of their book-face posting & zillions of interactions online.

Enemy of the State – & it’s not a movie

Weigh this.

A chap gets you to willingly share all your personal information, photos, friends list (at least those online), birthdays, location etc etc. He gets hailed as the best entrepreneur of the whatever period in history, multi-billion dollar valuations for his company. (Book-Face Zuckerberg)

Another lifts the lid on the criminal acts of a government who ostensibly commits murder of innocents in the name of democracy. He gets hounded by multiple governments, his own government denies any help to him, his news organisation is starved of payments, gets charged with sexual assault, & as finally gets labelled “Enemy of the state“. (Julian Assange/ Wikileaks).

Whither justice? Or is it a figment of our collective imagination?

How dependent are you on online banking?

As more and banks plod towards the Internet of Banking, (& the less of “currency” that we see & touch), we put too much of trust in the “big” organisations to keep “our money” safe. Trouble is, they either don’t  know, or care to, or both.

6 American Banks were impacted by a Denial of Service attack last week, which meant their customers couldn’t get access to their accounts online or pay their bills.

Things that go …. in the night

At about 2am last night, I awoke from deep sleep to a strange sound. I guess all sounds sound strange at 2am, but I’m not usually up at that hour to have any experience in the matter. It continued for what seemed like a long time, & then I realised what it was.. it was my wife, giggling away in her dream, well, it wasn’t giggling as much as peals of laughter. Pointing to our 18month old lying next to her, from deep in her sleep, she repeated “Rapunzel!” a couple of times, & then woke up, but the laughter continued, for a good 5 minutes after.

I shush’d her, trying my 2am brand of logic – “the neighbors might complain of an abusive husband, & the wife cries every night, & I hate to have to explain to the cops that this is how you laugh in your sleep. Shut up & go back to sleep”. It didn’t work, as I found out this morning. “Do you think I’m Mrs. M?” (the caretaker who’s lived with my wife’s family for over 4 decades, & is a bit slow in all matters of the mind, but then again, that is what my wife says!).

And this morning, reciting the happenings of the night to my 6 year old daughter brought forth fresh peals of laughter from the young lady. The toddler, evidently liking the sounds from his sister, added to the din.

I know what Heaven must sound like!

πŸ™‚

The medal race

I’m not an olympics fan – for various reasons.
What is interesting to me however is that China is off to a medal collecting race, already picking up 4 golds & 2 bronzes and no one on this side of the world (or any other media for that matter) is covering any of their athletes.
Bizarre? Or deliberate? (I’m no conspiracy theorist)

Another week gone by

This last week was an interesting week, fo’ sho’!
If I try to remember what I had for lunch on Monday (& I sometimes get that question from the Home Minister), I can’t usually remember. It’s no different today. I can’t remember lunch (or any other meal this week). What I do know however about food is that it is very nourishing. (It also is starting to show through my shirt).

I do remember that I met a few interesting people this week.
The first one began the conversation saying he had just returned from accompanying his wife to her first chemotherapy session. I haven’t had many of such conversation starters, & I admit it took me a while to recover.
I got to see some of my colleagues in a very different light too. With great power comes great responsibility – is what I have grown up thinking. That was challenged this week. I shan’t explain the details but I’m learning that it doesn’t apply in a corporate setting. The responsibility bit, that is. The care factor, as they call it, is below zero.

The kids have been surprising me with everything they’ve been up to. The dude has been learning to climb up the kitchen high chair on this own, & of course, occasionally toppling over – thankfully without causing much damage either to himself or to the general surroundings. The dudette, of course, is on to her latest fad, writing. She wants to be a writer when she grows up. The dictionary is her favorite book these days, & a notebook is filling up fast with new words & their meanings. Language is blooming in the house, even in winter!

I found myself struggling to read even a page out of my planned reading of the Great Books (I’m up to Aristotle’s book on Ethics. Fortunately for me, I stumbled across this page (site apparently not updated for a while) today, & this comment by the author Whitehead describes philosophy as the “critique of abstractions”β€”the endless effort to drag the balloon of the mind back to the earth of actual experience. Aristotle (at least in the current selections) looks like a collection of balloons – gives me some hope that I am not the only only struggling with this mammoth effort. There is light at the end of the reading tunnel!


I’ve added a few new blogs to my blogroll this week – discoveries made mostly on twitter (!!!). I have been back to my voracious reading – save the challenge with Aristotle above.


I’ve got to figure out how to create a linkblog on this site. Another item for the ballooning to-do list.