Stephen E. Arnold: Big Data Myths

IO Impotency
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Big Data Myths Debunked by Gartner Research

The article titled The Truth About Big Data on Datamation was posted September 26, 2014 and debunks some of the myths surrounding big data. Gartner, tech research firm, has collected data on the plans of organizations for big data. The most hopeful information may have been for businesses who have yet to hop on the big data bandwagon. This may sound like old news, but Gartner’s analysis of its findings leads to their claim that big data solution’s market “is in its infancy.” The article states,

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Berto Jongman: Harry Bentham on Google’s Betrayal (and Hypocrisy…)

Commerce, Corruption, IO Impotency
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Google’s Cold Betrayal of the Internet

Harry J. Bentham

IEET, 10 October 2014

Google Inc.’s 2013 book The New Digital Age, authored by Google chairman Eric Schmidt and Google Ideas director Jared Cohen, was showered with praise by many, but attacked in a review by Julian Assange for the New York Times, where it is described as a “love song” from Google to the US state. Also addressed in Assange’s subsequent book When Google Met WikiLeaks, Google’s book makes an unconvincing effort to depict the internet as a double-edged sword, both empowering (p. 6) and threatening our lives (p. 7).

The popular internet, Google argues, might help defeat the US’s “authoritarian” opponents, but also threatens to aid “terrorism” (p. 9) (Google’s word for cypherpunks and anti-statists) against the US itself. Thus, Google argues, the internet is potentially disruptive and harmful to US national security priorities – as is the possibility of individuals being personally empowered by technology. Google laments the “anarchy” being caused by the “agents of chaos”: generations of tech-savvy individuals armed with modern personal technologies (p. 46-47, 59, 207-208). Anonymous and other clans of hackers, we are told, “might as well be terrorists” (p. 151-182).

This is fairly consistent with the ideas of former President George W. Bush, who famously warned graduates at West Point that the gravest danger to the United States is “at the crossroads of radicalism and technology.” This point of view, alongside its knuckle-dragging obsession with defeating “rogue states” and “terrorists”, places Google’s apparent value-system unambiguously within the neoconservative ideological camp. The case for “guiding” the path of the internet (p. 11, 36-39), in particular, sounds equally shy and unsustainable as the authoritarian regimes (p. 6) Google claims to oppose.

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Yoda: UN Explores Data Revolution

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), IO Deeds of Peace, IO Impotency, Methods & Process, Non-Governmental, Strategy, Threats, True Cost, United Nations & NGOs
Got Crowd? BE the Force!
Got Crowd? BE the Force!

Thinking, they are.

Towards a Data Revolution

This summer UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon established the Independent Expert Advisory Group (IAEG) to provide concrete recommendations on how to achieve a Data Revolution for sustainable development. The IEAG report – due in early November – will be a crucial opportunity to explain how better quality and more timely data can transform development. The group is also looking for innovative approaches to data collection, publication, and use.

To solicit input from all communities of practice – particularly academia – the IAEG is hosting a public consultation at undatarevolution.org to solicit input into its work until October 15, 2015In spite of the short notice, we strongly encourage you to submit your ideas and suggestions for the data revolution. Please share this message widely and provide your comments on the IEAG website.

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Stephen E. Arnold: Robot Writers Flood the Web

Corruption, IO Impotency, Media
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Robot Writers Flood the Web

If you are reading this, it is likely that you look to the Internet for bit of news that inform your opinion on trends, technology, news stories, and the like. And most would assume that those stories and articles are crafted by humans who have an interest and experience in the field, just as this one is. But alas, we would all be wrong to believe that assumption. Robot writers are a growing proportion of the field. Read the details in the Contently article, “Does Your Brand Newsroom Need a Robot Writer?

The article begins:

“If you’ve spent any time reading on the web the past week, odds are you’ve read something written by a robot—and you didn’t even realize it. Robot writers are algorithms that collect and analyze data and then turn them into readable narratives. Many news sites like the Los Angeles Times and Forbes are already using them. Even Wikipedia has articles that weren’t written by humans.”

It is not surprising that automation has invaded the world of writing, but the jury is still out as to whether the quality is acceptable. But this also poses a question about cultural expectations regarding the quality of writing, particularly on Web outlets. See if you can spot the difference between articles crafted by human experts versus those written by a robot.

Emily Rae Aldridge, October 10, 2014

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext

Micah Sifry: Progressive Activism Frustrated by Lack of Tools — And Refusal to Share…

Civil Society, IO Impotency
Micah Sifry
Micah Sifry

Transparency, Big Data and Internet Activism

Internet activism—and internet democracy—depend on accessible public meeting spaces online. So why are there so few of them?

By Micah L. Sifry

UTNE Reader, October 2014

Micah L. Sifry tackles the reasons progressive change has failed to manifest with the growth of the internet in The Big Disconnect (OR Books, 2014). Internet activism seemed like the wave of the future only two decades ago, but the Internet’s potential as a tool for progressive change has not quite given rise to sustained political mobilization and participation. The following excerpt from Part 4, “The Way We Look To Us All,” focuses on ways to create online public spaces that cater to internet democracy and internet transparency in ways current social media does not.

The Internet does not have to become one more means for mass marketing and manipulation. It can also transform civic life into something far more participatory, transparent, and engaging. And rather than just work as a tool for petitioning and protest that a few people use on behalf of much larger atomized groups of individuals, it can link problem-spotters with problem-solvers, and make everyday life better in myriad ways.

As Ami Dar, the founder of Idealist.org, a hub for listing volunteer service opportunities, likes to say, “Our problems are connected, but we are not.” That is, most people don’t know who lives near them, or what they may be thinking about important issues. The way Big Data now works, only the managers of giant data-streams have a comprehensive understanding of who is interested in what. For example, Google knows who is searching for terms that relate to the flu, and can use that information to build a model that predicts where outbreaks are taking place. It can even (and does) serve up useful medical advice for such search results.

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Tom Engelhardt: Failure is Success – How American Intelligence Works in the Twenty-First Century PLUS Robert Steele on Steps President Obama Could Take…

Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Impotency, Misinformation & Propaganda, Office of Management and Budget, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Tom Englehardt
Tom Englehardt

Failure Is Success: How American Intelligence Works in the Twenty-First Century

“While taxpayer dollars flowed into your coffers, no one considered it a problem that the country lacked 17 overlapping outfits bent on preventing approximately 400,000 deaths by firearms in the same years; nor 17 interlocked agencies dedicated to safety on our roads, where more than 450,000 Americans have died since 9/11”

By

MintPressNews,

What are the odds? You put about $68 billion annually into a maze of 17 major intelligence outfits. You build them glorious headquarters.  You create a global surveillance state for the ages. You listen in on your citizenry and gather their communications in staggering quantities.  Your employees even morph into avatars and enter video-game landscapes, lest any Americans betray a penchant for evil deeds while in entertainment mode. You collect information on visits to porn sites just in case, one day, blackmail might be useful. You pass around naked photos of them just for… well, the salacious hell of it.  Your employees even use aspects of the system you’ve created to stalk former lovers and, within your arcane world, that act of “spycraft” gains its own name: LOVEINT.

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Stephen E. Arnold: EU Concludes Google is Hurting the Internet

Commerce, Corruption, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Impotency
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Quote to Note: Users Want Relevant Results

October 6, 2014

I highlighted this remarkable, earth shaking statement from “Google+ Is Hurting the Internet.” Here’s the passage:

…they [users] prefer to get the most relevant results.

The information appears in a Web page presenting “objective study results” conducted for a European group.

The target is poor, old Google. The company has to pump up revenues and margins. Amazon and Facebook are embracing online advertising. The Google X moonshots have not delivered big bucks to the Mountain View redoubt. Mobile search behaves differently from the old fashioned pay to play content inspired by the GoTo, Overture, and Yahoo approach.

What to do?

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