What Makes You Horny? Big Data!
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This document discusses the rise of big data and personal informatics, as well as some of the challenges and opportunities that have emerged around data. It notes that data has become the new gold and explores how individuals can track both their online and real-world lives through examples of personal informatics. It also examines collective informatics generated by people's actions and created in their names, touching on public vs private data and examples. The document outlines some new disciplines like data visualization, engineering for scalability and real-time needs, data mining, and API design. It closes by suggesting opportunities through data to make better sense of information and take action by gathering, analyzing, reflecting, and acting.
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What Makes You Horny? Big Data!
- 1. WMYH? @alper
- 2. DATA
- 4. BIG DATA
- 6. “Data is the new gold.”
- 8. Keeping track of your online life
- 9. And your life in the real world
- 10. Examples
- 21. Generated by our actions
- 22. Created in our name
- 23. Private & Public
- 24. Examples
- 33. new challenges
- 35. new disciplines
- 36. • Data visualizer • Scalability / Real Time engineer • Data miner • API designer
- 38. to make better sense
- 39. take action
- 40. • Gather • Analyze • Reflect • Act
- 41. What will you do?
Editor's Notes
- A presentation about what makes me horny for the What Makes You Horny unconference organized by Boondoggle. I’m Alper Cugun (@alper) and http://alper.nl
- One thing that makes me horny is data (the other thing is design). Where these two cross, things begin to get interesting.
- And I’m not talking about your little old data.
- I’m talking about sweet succulent luscious huge data. BIG DATA!
- The kind of data stored on these servers in data centers. We are generating more data right now than ever before (insert boring statistic). http://www.flickr.com/photos/wbob/4171615158/
- You probably heard this quote before. It is true. Most websites and apps are just seductive frontends designed to collect data.
- One branch of data generation is the personal side of things. It is becoming incredibly easy and more fun than ever before to keep track of everything you do.
- So we used to keep track of our online lives sitting behind our computers at home.
- And now with mobile technology we are keeping track of our lives in the real world.
- Some examples of personal informatics.
- You could keep track of your music.
- You could keep track of your reading (on Anobii and a number of other sites).
- You could keep track of your friends (real or otherwise suggested) on our well known Facebook.
- You could keep track of your running with Runkeeper.
- But now you can also keep track of all your activity, including your sleep with the Fitbit.
- You can keep track of your leisure time using Foursquare.
- You can keep track of the comings and goings on your bank account using Yunoo (like Mint).
- Now with Blippy you can publish your entire credit expense history.
- And with the Appie app on your iPhone, I can even see what my most popular groceries are.
- The other branch of information gathering is something I’ll term Collective Informatics (for lack of a better word for it).
- This is information generated by our collective behaviour our actions or by our very presence in a nation state.
- Information created in our name, by our governments and their workings.
- This information can be both very public as well as very private (and many shades in between).
- Some examples of collective informatics (a limited but interesting cross section I hope).
- Surveillance information is one very poignant example of collective information that is recorded about us as well as by us.
- Sattelite and aerial photography is generated and used by us all as well.
- Transit billing with contactless payment cards and our transit movements which are derivable from this is also collective information of which it is not yet completely clear what we can do with it.
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/itolabs/4046976636/in/set-72157622542739701 The same goes for road traffic information. Think about congestion charges, other billing systems (rekeningrijden) and congestion information systems such as TomTom HD.
- MIT senseable city, SMS activity during new year’s eve now visualize our communication behaviour in a city on a grand aggregate level.
- http://www.wheredoesmymoneygo.org/prototype/ Our budget, the money we all raise through taxes an mandate to be spent on various causes is just one small facet of the information generated by our government. Really most anything generated by civil servants and governments should be accessible under a freedom of information law.
- Measurements of our environment being fed back to us using visualization or being used to create environmental policy are another interesting example. This is a pachube feed of particulate data predictions being scraped and fed by http://www.vervuilingsalarm.nl
- And information about our world at the aggregate country level in Human Development Indexes and other measures. This is visualized by Gapminder in videos such as the above one by Hans Rosling.
- There are a ton of new challenges with this new flow of information. The first challenge is to create and get the data. Various strategies are employed by companies and governments to rake in as much as they can. But more challenges lie in the control, access, and privacy of this data (actually these there are different sides of the same thing). Privacy is important in a fundamental sense, but what users care about is control which shapes the perception of their privacy.
- And search is also an important issue especially with the huge amount of data and datasets being published right now around the world. The Guardian launched their government data search engine last week to help everybody search for data. Now it is our task to get the Netherlands (and other governments) on there.
- This new trend of big data, heralds in a period when new disciplines become more important.
- Some of the disciplines necessary: Data visualizer: to make aesthetically pleasing sense out of the deluge of data. Scalability engineer: to make sure the systems keep running smooth and swift and we don’t see too many failwhales. Data mining: to extract deep knowledge from large amounts of data to help to create recommendations or fulfill tasks API designer: to make this data easily, meaningfully and legally accessible to other who want to create value on top of it. These are also roughly the professional fields I’m busy in.
- And there are massive new opportunities for individuals, companies and governments to create value across the board.
- If only to make better sense of ourselves, our family, our friends, our social circle, our neighborhood, our city, our country. To make better sense of our world.
- And to use that sense and the knowledge gained to improve your actions, your environment and the world in general.
- That is the cycle of this presentation. Gather the data, analyze it, display it, reflect upon that and then act upon the realizations. And after that iterate again from the beginning of course.
- So what will you do with/in all of this? Thanks! Alper Cugun http://twitter.com/alper