Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think

Financial Times Business Book of the Year Finalist

“Illuminating and very timely . . . a fascinating — and sometimes alarming — survey of big data’s growing effect on just about everything: business, government, science and medicine, privacy, and even on the way we think.”
—New York Times

It seems like “big data” is in the news every day, as we read the latest examples of how powerful algorithms are teasing out the hidden connections between seemingly unrelated things. Whether it is used by the NSA to fight terrorism or by online retailers to predict customers’ buying patterns, big data is a revolution occurring around us, in the process of forever changing economics, science, culture, and the very way we think. But it also poses new threats, from the end of privacy as we know it to the prospect of being penalized for things we haven’t even done yet, based on big data’s ability to predict our future behavior. What we have already seen is just the tip of the iceberg.

Big Data is the first major book about this earthshaking subject, with two leading experts explaining what big data is, how it will change our lives, and what we can do to protect ourselves from its hazards.

“An optimistic and practical look at the Big Data revolution — just the thing to get your head around the big changes already underway and the bigger changes to come.”
—Cory Doctorow, boingboing.com

VIKTOR MAYER-SCHÖNBERGER is Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University. The co-author of Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We, Live, Work, and Think, he has published over a hundred articles and eight other books, including Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age. He is on the advisory boards of corporations and organizations around the world, including Microsoft and the World Economic Forum.

KENNETH CUKIER is the Data Editor of the Economist and co-author of Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think. His writings on business and economics have appeared in Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, the Financial Times, and elsewhere.