The Book Depository Big Data by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger
943 ratings
TO EXPLORE MORE
Price: £15.95
Brand: The Book Depository
Description: Big Data : Paperback : Harper Business : 9780544227750 : 0544227751 : 04 Mar 2014 : A revelatory exploration of emerging trends in big data--our newfound ability to gather and interpret vast amounts of information--and the revolutionary effects these developments are producing in business, science, and society at large. The Book Depository Big Data by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: The Book Depository
Product ID: 9780544227750
MPN: 0544227751
GTIN: 9780544227750
Author: M A Mohamed
Rating: 5
Review: Very interesting book. It is one of the books that I would recommend to be used as reference book, as it contains lots of examples and quotations about individuals, who woke up to the reality of the Big data and how it could be utilised for the good and, perhaps, the more challenging way of profiling innocent people according to their names, culture, religion, political thoughts etc. I would also recommend this book to the anyone interested in studying or curious about "the concept machine learning and what role the big data can play." Sometimes, you may wonder how Cortana finds out when it is the time to leave for work or home; or it predicts how the traffic would be, while you are on your way to work or home. If you do wonder about this, then you must read this book. Author's acknowledgement of the role of "algorithmists" in Big data is also plausible. Imagine the day the nutters become part of the law society. I think this would inject honesty into the "how most lawyers handle cases that they are working on." You can skip this paragraph: If you ever wondered how Neural Network proponents will ever succeed to teach a basic Times table to algorithm that requires two input numbers, like 8 time 7, then after reading this book, you will note Big Data will may help. Note that when we are young and attending elementary schools, most of us learn the Times table by memorising. As we grow, we simply identify a strategy where we, for example, think 7 Times table goes up by 7 and 8 Times table goes up by 8. Hence, no need to memories. In this instance, Big Data can be used to bridge the gap between the Neural Network and those, like me, who very much believe that we should focusing on mimicking how our neocortext works and complement it with Algorithms that make our machines perform better than our neocortext. In this paradigm, the Big Data will be used for playing the role of the memory and experience, while still we will be able to create strategies that can be serialised into and de-serialised from the Big Data repository. The author does also go on about privacy and the challenges Big Data faces. I think the question to ask is: if we accepted to use the cloud, have we not sleepwalked into sharing our data with those, who are there to analyse data? Is it the machine that should only have an access to our private data; or also those, who own this smart machines? Would the combination of Big Data and Intelligent machines bring about the creation of all-knowing being that cannot only know our past, but can also predict our future activities. And imagine what impact this would have on currency/stock traders? Do not even think politics here, as this will get more scarier. If you have ever watched the Movie "Her" and reasoned with the poor man, who fallen for OS that knows him very well, then think about the consequence of intelligent machines, powered by Big Data! And this is another reason to read this book. However, we should never fear exploring what we are capable of doing for the good of this world and its inhabitants; but should also be prepare to ensure that the all-knowing thing, which we are in the process of creating, is not one dictator, but one that lives and functions within democratic system.
Author: Andrel
Rating: 1
Review: This is a book of missed opportunities. One of the central themes in this book is the conversion from looking for causality to correlations. Showing that the authors knowledge of physics ends with Newton, that they have never studied genetics or developmental biology, and totally missed the artificial neural networks. From that I infer that they also missed many more parallels in all fields of science that I am less familiar with. That is a pity. The section on ethics and privacy is especially weak. Lots of questions are unanswered and most are not even posed. If you have an Android phone and you cheat on your spouse, Google has enough information to deduce that with a high level of certainty. Are they harvesting that information? Can someone else create a startup to sell that information? There is also no discussion on political use. Independent of the type of smart-phone the NSA will also know if someone is cheating. Is that information used to influence the lawmaking process by the government or by big data companies? Is knowledge on the political preference of citizens used to 'improve' the borders of electoral districts? Are certain groups of voters and individuals actively encouraged or discouraged to vote based on their political preference by lawmakers or political parties? And for all of these questions (and many more): would that be ethically acceptable? Of course these are just examples of some issues that are missing. I don't expect the authors to address exactly these, but what is discussed is too little to make this book relevant. That is not good. In the book the authors say that it is useful information to know when readers stops reading a book. To answer that for this book: it is probably already somewhere before half of it, when the authors keep repeating themselves in every chapter without any new insights. The reason I finished it was that I was wondering if you can write a book on big data without discussing identity theft. Apparently you can. That is surprising. This book may have some useful insights, but (ironically for a book on big data) you have to consult many other sources to get a more useful picture of reality.
