Have you heard ….. big data relies on a very big assumption: that having more data gives organisations better understanding of their environment. The apostles of big data preach that it will make organisations smarter. In fact, the opposite is true: big data dulls an organisation's strategic senses. Here's how…
1. Much of the quantifiable data is not strategically useful: Today we accumulate extraordinary amounts of quantified data, but how much of that data helps us understand a complex and rapidly changing environment, where by definition data is always ambiguous and lagging? During the Cold War, the US Government looked at USSR military capability as a signal of economic success. When the USSR economy collapsed, they realised that the number of missiles was not a true reflection of the strength of their economy at all, it was a huge drain on their financial resources. The US realised they were making strategic decisions based on the wrong data.
Dafna Aizenberg's Atlas of the World Wide Web visualizes data taken from the internet. Image: Dafna Aizenberg
A traditional atlas can tell you a lot about a place—its population, its religious affiliations, its geographical quirks—but it tends to ignore a major aspect of daily life in 2013: the internet. For the past 30 years, the our digital lives, or lack thereof, have increasingly become a defining factor in how countries are perceived. Accordingly, Israel-based designer Dafna Aizenberg felt that it was time for a 21st century update to classic atlas maps. “Recently I’ve found myself exploring the social implications of the internet on our lives,” she explains. “Both the positive and negative aspects that come with it.” Aizenberg created the Atlas of the World Wide Web, a 120-page visual guide to how the internet has blurred the traditional, physical borders around the world. The atlas’ six chapters, which span everything from IP addresses to internet infrastructure to e-commerce, feature striking visualizations that highlight often unnoticed trends brought on by the spread of the internet.
Though Aizenberg’s images are densely packed with information, the design is clean and clear. “Inspired from generative design, I used basic shapes that change according to the data,” she explains. “The challenge was to create a generative system without any computer-generated graphics, as I wanted to have full control over each map.” Each chapter looks and feels totally different from the next, which Aizenberg says was an important aspect of the project. “Although the entire Atlas needed to keep the same general aesthetics, it was clear that each chapter has to adapt itself to the subject at hand and be unique,” she says. For example, the cybercrime chapter uses darker colors, which aim to communicate the negative atmosphere, while the shapes used in the spread on email spam are meant to give a feeling of disorientation.
Aizenberg’s book reinforces some longstanding trends in global inequality. Her IP address distribution chart in particular illustrates how technological advancements sharply divided countries into the haves and have-nots. Using open source data, Aizenberg charted the number of addresses per country—as the number of IP addresses rise, the color of the country darkens. Places like the United States show up as a deep-hued red, while parts of Africa nearly disappear from the map altogether.
“Working on the atlas strengthened my feelings that the world is still very much apart and divided between regions and cultures which are technologically superior and others which are having a real hard time catching up in terms of internet availability and penetration levels,” she says. Still, the atlas reveals some surprising facts, like despite the United States being home to two of the most famous social media sites, its social connectivity pales in comparison to other countries around the world. “I was certain of the U.S. being the most socially occupied country, but it didn’t even make it into the top 10,” she says. “One explanation could be that the U.S. is not all about NYC and the Silicon Valley in California, but also about other regions, which are less tech savvy.” An astute observation, indeed.
Atlas of the World Wide Web isn’t currently for sale (interested publishers are welcome to get in touch), but you can check out more of her visualizations on Cargo Collective.
It turns out that the NSA's domestic and world-wide surveillance apparatus is even more extensive than we thought. Bluntly: The government has commandeered the Internet. Most of the largest Internet companies provide information to the NSA, betraying their users. Some, as we've learned, fight and lose. Others cooperate, either out of patriotism or because they believe it's easier that way.
I have one message to the executives of those companies: fight.
With a diplomatic attitude more reminiscent of a spoiled brat grabbing his toys and leaving the room, US President Obama has resorted to diplomatic snubs and childish criticisms of Russian behavior as if the Russian leaders were small children.
In a press conference Obama described the Russian President as having a “slouch…looking like that bored schoolboy in the back of the classroom.” Yet behind the childish form of the latest White House refusal to meet President Putin before the G-20 St. Petersburg Summit is a grim reality:
Washington is rapidly losing its way to impose its will in the world on multiple fronts and the Putin snub is an impotent reflection of that loss of power. The real issues in US-Russian relations go far deeper.
In a bit of fortuitous timing, this week we had asked former deputy chief of staff for Ron Wyden, Jennifer Hoelzer, to do our weekly “Techdirt Favorites of the Week” post, in which we have someone from the wider Techdirt community tell us what their favorite posts on the site were. As you'll see below, Hoelzer has a unique and important perspective on this whole debate concerning NSA surveillance, and given the stories that came out late Friday, she chose to ditch her original post on favorites and rewrite the whole thing from scratch last night (and into this morning). Given that, it's much, much more than a typical “favorites of the week” post, and thus we've adjusted the title appropriately. I hope you'll read through this in its entirety for a perspective on what's happening that not many have.
Tim Cushing made one of my favorite points of the week in his Tuesday post “Former NSA Boss Calls Snowden's Supporters Internet Shut-ins; Equates Transparency Activists With Al-Qaeda,” when he explained that “some of the most ardent defenders of our nation's surveillance programs” — much like proponents of overreaching cyber-legislation, like SOPA — have a habit of “belittling” their opponents as a loose confederation of basement-dwelling loners.” I think it's worth pointing out that General Hayden's actual rhetoric is even more inflammatory than Cushing's. Not only did the former NSA director call us “nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twenty-somethings who haven't talked to the opposite sex in five or six years,” he equates transparency groups like the ACLU with al Qaeda.
(Reuters) – Inquiries into the bloody assault on an Algerian gas plant are uncovering increasing evidence of contacts between the assailants and the jihadis involved in killing the U.S. ambassador to Libya nearly a year ago.
The extent of the contacts between the militants is still unclear and nobody is sure there was a direct link between the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the carnage at In Amenas, where 39 foreign hostages were killed in January.
But the findings, according to three sources with separate knowledge of U.S. investigations, shed some light on the connections between Al Qaeda affiliates stretching ever further across North and West Africa.
The lack of detail, meanwhile, highlights the paucity of intelligence on jihadis whose rise has been fuelled by the 2011 Arab uprisings and who have shown ready to strike scattered Western targets including mines and energy installations.
I have been following the flood of information about Jeff Bezos’ apparent purchase of the The Washington Post. I use the word “apparent” because it is not clear if Mr. Bezos or Nash Holdings LLC bought the newspaper. For the purpose of this Beyond Search item, let’s assume that a Bezos-controlled entity has the keys to the Lego kit with millions of blocks that the Washington Post represents. Building a profitable newspapers may be like taking the brightly colored blocks and assembling them in just the right way to build a cash machine.
Click on Image to Enlarge
The obvious point is that Mr. Bezos, an Internet business superstar, sees riches where others see union hassles, declining advertising revenues, and “real” journalism about the most exciting place in the swampy area bordering on the Potomac.
Reuters’ take on the deal was interesting. The story “Amazon’s Bezos Pays Hefty Price for Washington Post.” Thomson Reuters rarely overpays for its acquisitions, so I interpreted the headline as a suggestion that Mr. Bezos’ financial skills are not up to Thomson Reuters’ standards. Both Thomson Reuters and Amazon have cost control challenges, and it is not clear which organization is better positioned for the economic storms which are forming on the horizon.
