For Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, his team broke down data silos and moved all the data to a cloud repository. The team built Narwhal, a shared data store interface for all of the campaigns’ application. Narwhal was dubbed “Obama’s White Whale,” because it is almost a mythical technology that federal agencies have been trying to develop for years. While Obama may be hanging out with Queequag and Ishmael, there is a more viable solution for the cloud says GCN’s article, “Big Metadata: 7 Ways To Leverage Your Data In the Cloud.”
Data silo migration may appear to be a daunting task, but it is not impossible to do. The article states:
I have no idea whether this is real or not, but the idea is certainly neat… advancing the idea of the tricorder, the universal instrument the heroes of Star Trek always had with them…
Buyer beware – it could be one of those things that get funded never to be heard of again. If it's real, we will know fairly soon. A few months of wait.
$250 handheld laser spectrometer food scaner will connect to your smartphone and servers in the cloud to tell you what allergens, chemicals, nutrients, calories, ingredients are in your food
My issue with any visualization, however brilliant, is that it assumes that it will engage consensus and action.
Missing is the recognition that even if we had a hard data visualization that one million people were to die tomorrow somewhere — even in New York — the level of engagement would be low. Who says so? Is it a scam? Is it spin? etc
There is a glass ceiling effect which is not addressed, irrespective of the nature of the crisis. Central Arica ciurrently offers an example. Increasingly, who cares, or why should I care? I walk pass beggars everyday. What is not evident from such visualization is what it is expected that anyone should do and why. My first take on this was:
using networks of international organizations, world problems, strategies, and values
Abstract: The paper reports briefly on the ongoing process of systematic information collection and web presentation by the UIA of networks of over 30,000 international organizations, 56,000 perceived world problems, 32,000 advocated action strategies, and some 3,000 values — resulting in a total of 800,000 hyperlinks. These different entities constitute an interesting focal sub-system of whatever is to be understood by an emerging global brain – for which the “problems” might be understood as “neuroses”, if not “tumours”.
But I do think that the capacity to do anything with big data is very limited. We used fancy software — Netmap, as used by security services — but so what.See fancy graphic screenshots in:
What tech companies does the financial sector think are on top right now? TechCrunch discussed invitees ahead of the recent Goldman Sachs Private Internet Company Conference in Las Vegas in, “Here Are the Hottest Companies in Tech Right Now, According to Goldman Sachs.” Reporter Colleen Taylor reproduces for us the conference schedule, which apparently should have been kept on the down-low, but TechCrunch got a hold of somehow. She writes:
“The Goldman Sachs conference for private web firms is one of the most high-end and hush-hush events in the tech world. It’s essentially like the Hackers Conference or dinners at Sheryl Sandberg’s house or Fight Club, except for tech executives who are likely to soon go through an IPO or big M&A deal. If you’re on the invite list, you’re in pretty good company — and the first rule is that you don’t talk about it to others.
“[…] It bears mention that companies attending this conference have not necessarily engaged in an exclusive relationship with Goldman to manage their potential upcoming IPOs or M&A deals. In fact, most of them are free agents, fielding offers from any number of firms.”
Taylor points out a few notable absences, like Square, Dropbox, and Box. We, however, noticed something different: not a single search company is represented. Well, humph.
