Big data, according to Harper Reed, is “bullshit” 

I’m just tired of it being called big data. It should just be called data. And the other thing is I bet there are very few people in this room who actually have data that is big. You probably have large data or medium data or long data. But it’s the big data that’s actually a pain in the arse still and it’s hard.”

Robert McNamara epitomizes the hyper-rational executive led astray by numbers.

Big Data promises a future where our Big Cities become more flexible and responsive to human needs, argues commentator Adam Frank.

Markus Persson and his game continue to confound the wisdom of video-game critics, consultants, and publishing mavens. Minecraft looks nothing like the multi-million-dollar blockbusters that usually line GameStop’s shelves.

A map of recent contributions to Wikipedia from unregistered users.

Teens share a wide range of information about themselves on social media sites;1indeed the sites themselves are designed to encourage the sharing of information and the expansion of networks. However, few teens embrace a fully public approach to social media. Instead, they take an array of steps to restrict and prune their profiles, and their patterns of reputation management on social media vary greatly according to their gender and network size. These are among the key findings from a new report based on a survey of 802 teens that examines teens’ privacy management on social media sites:

At rOpenSci we are creating packages that allow access to data repositories through the R statistical programming environment that is already a familiar part of the workflow of many scientists. We hope that our tools will not only facilitate drawing data into an environment where it can readily be manipulated, but also one in which those analyses and methods can be easily shared, replicated, and extended by other researchers. While all the pieces for connecting researchers with these data sources exist as disparate entities, our efforts will provide a unified framework that will be quickly connect researchers to open data.

We are surrounded by tiny, intelligent devices that capture data about how we live and what we do. Soon we’ll be able to choreograph them to respond to our needs, solve our problems, and even save our lives.

 The Unlike Us Reader offers a critical examination of social media, bringing together theoretical essays, personal discussions, and 

artistic manifestos. How can we understand the social media we use everyday, or consciously choose not to use? We know very well that monopolies control social media, but what are the alternatives? While Facebook continues to increase its user population and combines loose privacy restrictions with control over data, many researchers, programmers, and activists turn towards designing a decentralized future. Through understanding the big networks from within, be it by philosophy or art, new perspectives emerge.

Unlike Us is a research network of artists, designers, scholars, activists, and programmers, with the aim to combine a critique of the dominant social media platforms with work on ‘alternatives in social media’, through workshops, conferences, online dialogues, and publications. Everyone is invited to be a part of the public discussion on how we want to shape the network architectures and the future of social networks we are using so intensely.

Contributors: Solon Barocas, Caroline Bassett, Tatiana Bazzichelli, David Beer, David M. Berry, Mercedes Bunz, Florencio Cabello, Paolo Cirio, Joan Donovan, Louis Doulas, Leighton Evans, Marta G. Franco, Robert W. Gehl, Seda Gürses, Alexandra Haché, Harry Halpin, Mariann Hardey, Pavlos Hatzopoulos, Yuk Hui, Ippolita, Nathan Jurgenson, Nelli Kambouri, Jenny Kennedy, Ganaele Langlois, Simona Lodi, Alessandro Ludovico, Tiziana Mancinelli, Andrew McNicol, Andrea Miconi, Arvind Narayanan, Wyatt Niehaus, Korinna Patelis, PJ Rey, Sebastian Sevignani, Bernard Stiegler, Marc Stumpel, Tiziana Terranova, Vincent Toubiana, Brad Troemel, Lonneke van der Velden, Martin Warnke and D.E. Wittkower.

Is there too much hype around ‘big data’? Kenneth Cukier thinks so, and yet he remains passionate about what we can achieve with it.

Cukier is the Data Editor at The Economist and …