Big data: how will it shape our future?

Some revolutions announce themselves with violent upheaval, said Allister Heath in The Daily Telegraph. “Others just sneak up on us.” The rise of “big data” is a perfect example of the latter. Computer analysis of the vast digital trail created by everything from web searches and smartphones, to credit card payments and medical histories is set to transform our world. Tesco was an early pioneer of the new data economy in the 1990s when it launched its loyalty card, enabling the store to analyse shopping habits and offer personalised discounts. Lord Maclaurin, the firm’s chairman, was stunned by the early results. “What scares me about this,” he told the team behind the card, “is that you know more about my customers after three months than I know after 30 years.” Think of the modern digital economy as a “massive extension” of that Clubcard concept, involving far more data points.

Data-mining algorithms are becoming ever more sophisticated, said Franklin Foer in The Guardian. No longer do humans have to devise theories and then laboriously trawl through records for corroborating evidence. Now, with the help of computers, they can just wait for patterns to emerge from mountains of data, “unguided by hypotheses”. Thus Walmart discovered the curious fact that shoppers stock up on strawberry Pop-tarts before big storms. Big data is a boon in many ways. It can help us track down obscure books in milliseconds and find long-lost friends, and it has huge potential for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. But with the ability to anticipate people’s behaviour also comes the power to manipulate it. It’s troubling that Facebook has “bragged” about increasing voter turnout in the last US election.

The concentration of power is the most worrying aspect of this technology, said Rana Foroohar in the FT. Big data “tilts the playing field decisively in favour of the largest digital players” such as Google, Facebook and Amazon, allowing them to further entrench their monopolies and “reshape the 21st century economy to suit themselves”. They get away with this because the US authorities have long taken the view that as long as companies keep prices down, they can be as big and powerful as they wish. But while these firms may be offering a free service on the face of it, customers are paying a cost in the form of ceded personal data. That trade needs to be acknowledged more explicitly. “We are living in a brave new world, with an entirely new currency. It will require creative thinking – economically, legally and politically – to ensure that it does not become a winner-takes-all society.”