“By definition, big data cannot yield complicated descriptions of causality. Especially in healthcare. Almost all of our diseases occur in the intersections of systems in the body. For example, there is a drug that is marketed by Elan BioNeurology called TYSABRI. It was developed for MS [multiple sclerosis]. It turns out that of the people who have MS a proportion respond magnificently to TYSABRI. And others don’t. So what do you conclude from this? Is it just a mediocre drug? No. It is that there is one disease but it manifests itself in different ways. How does big data figure out what is the core of what is going on?”–Clayton Christensen
“That’s why we were really excited when one of our colleagues recently suggested that our generation’s ‘Mad Men’ moment had arrived. ‘Big Data is our biggest and best opportunity to regain cultural rock star status,’ he said. ‘Instead of Mad Men, we’ll be Tech Men!’ But he also warned how daunting this task will be for advertisers and marketers in terms of Big Data’s difficulty to master and, as he so eloquently put it, ‘Big Brothery implications'”–Michael Ruby
“Facebook is a crowd-fueled, data-mining machine that’s now so massive (1.11 billion monthly active users as of March 2013) that it doesn’t matter if you haven’t ever signed up yourself to sign over your personal data. It has long since passed the tipping point where it can act as a distributed data network that knows something about almost everyone. Or everyone who leaves any kind of digital/cellular trace that can be fed into its data banks”–Natasha Lomas
“The original design of the web of 24 years ago was for a universal space, we didn’t have a particular computer in mind or browser, or language. When you make something universal… it can be used for good things or nasty things… we just have to make sure it’s not undercut by any large companies or governments trying to use it to get total control”–Tim Berners-Lee
