Mayer-Schönberger, Viktor; Kenneth Cukier (2013): Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think; London, John Murray.
Academic Mayer-Schönberger and editor Cukier consider big data the new ability to crunch vast collections of information, analyze it instantly, and draw conclusions from it. Big data is about predictions: math applied to large quantities of data in order to infer probabilities. Because big data allows us to analyze far more data, we will move beyond expecting exactness and can no longer be fixated on causation. The authors state, The correlations may not tell us precisely why something is happening, but they alert us that it is happening. For individuals, big data risks an invasion of privacy, as vast amounts of personal data are collected and the potential exists to accuse a person of some possible future behavior that has not happened. The authors conclude that big data is a tool that doesn’t offer ultimate answers, just good-enough ones to help us now until better methods and hence better answers come along.