Watched by the Web: Surveillance Is Reborn

Watched by the Web: Surveillance Is Reborn

Google does it. Amazon does it. Walmart does it. And, as news reports last week made clear, the United States government does it. Does what? Uses “big data” analysis of the swelling flood of data that is being generated and stored about virtually every aspect of our...
More or Less: Can big data save lives?

More or Less: Can big data save lives?

In More or Less Ruth Alexander explains – and sometimes debunks – the numbers and statistics used in political debate, the news and everyday life. This week we ask – our everyday lives generate around 2.5 quintillion bytes of data according to IBM....
Is data visualisation just style over substance?

Is data visualisation just style over substance?

The advent of sophisticated computer graphics has encouraged more and more use of data-visualisation – not least by BBC News. The clever means of presenting detailed text or statistical information in a non-conventional manner is developing fast, but some...
Data and the secret scramble for AI’s soul

Data and the secret scramble for AI’s soul

The key resource of the AI era is labeled training data, and a quiet rivalry is on to get it. Clever firms rely on user interactions — and the “data exhaust” this generates — to improve their services in a continuous feedback loop. FULL...