We Need to Have a Big Conversation About Big Data

I think that it’s incredibly important to people, all of us start having this conversation right now about big data and what it means, who owns it, what’s being done with our information, who controls it, because I’m so concerned about the fact that this is going to change the world in every conceivable way.

The world that our children living in is going to be completely different because of big data.  And I want to make sure that we are all part of that conversation and it’s not just companies and corporations that are making these decisions.  Because some of these things will get started getting set in stone.  It’ll will be very hard to change them going forward. I don’t believe our politicians have a clue.  If you look at the morass in Washington right now of getting anything done, I don’t know who it is that supposed to make the decisions but I somehow I feel like the politicians are the last ones who are going to actually either understand it or spend time or be willing to risk their own political careers to actually fight back against corporations and governments to actually protect us as individuals.

So I think we need to be having the conversation.  We’ve just given out a copy of the Human Face of Big Data to 10,000 of the most influential men and women in the world.  We’ve just delivered the book to world leaders, Fortune 500 CEO’s, heads of media companies, Olympic winners, movie stars, musicians.  We just want people who have other people paying attention to them to start talking about big data.  I don’t care if it’s about our book or our app, I just want people to be having this conversation while there’s still time to actually influence and affect the outcome. 

In Their Own Words is recorded in Big Think’s studio.

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