Session 3 Blog: The Era of Big Data is Coming


Are the technologies neutral? Such question came to me when I read the related papers. For the technological determinism, they believe that technologies embody ideas, needs, imagination, possibilities from specific periods and places. As far as I am concerned, technologies become somehow subjective when they interact with the social ecology. When researchers dealing with the big data, the process of interpretation is impossible to be regarded as totally objectivity and accuracy. As the instance puts in the article Critical Questions for Big Data: Provocations for a Cultural, Technological and Scholarly Phenomenon, there is a “data cleaning” process in social media case, and the researchers will make decisions on what attributes to be counted and which will be ignored. Moreover, we should also keep in mind that the big data sets from Internet sources could be unreliable sometimes, which means we cannot depend on the “facts” the data presents without social judgement. While the “Big Data has emerged a system of knowledge that is already changing the objects of knowledge” ( Danah Boyed and Kate Crawford, 2012, p6), it does not mean that big data is unable to be driven by human’s mind in return. In fact, we usually use it as tools to understand our society. Thus, I still stand in the middle side in the discussion of technological determinism vs. social constructionism.



From the reading Lawrence Lessing(1999) argues that social systems are regulated by four forces: market, law, social norms and architecture (Danah Boyed and Kate Crawford, 2012, p4). And for the market, Big Data is a pure opportunity. According to my personal interests, I once did some research in big data and business innovation. In the era of Internet Plus, the market is becoming more socialized, associated and mobile, and the big data insights could be valuable in various aspects of business strategy. For example, the Cognitive Computing is now used in retail industry, as it can help retailers to think as customers—they create personal interaction and explore new connections based on history activities information of customers, and retailers could also get some advice on their future decision making. To some extent, the big data is not neutral and standlone “numbers”, it is an effective way to learn social behaviors from space-time-connections. I hold a positive attitude towards the development of big data, and I believe that the new technology can bring some great changes in modern industries, especially in business filed.


Comments

  1. Minh LeSeptember 21, 2017 at 8:06 AM

    Hi Xiaoxue,

    I think you have brought up a very good point regarding how corporate world is making a good use of big data to not only run the business more effectively and drive more profits but also serve its customer better. It is needless to say nowadays there is no company out there which can ignore the trend of big data. The possibilities of big data are endless and its current implications are very impressive. I am on your side as I am also in favor of the potential development of big data. I strongly believe that with the power of big data, we will be able to answer lots of critical questions with regard to individuals, our society, and life out of the Earth.

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  2. UnknownSeptember 21, 2017 at 8:58 AM

    I really appreciated that you hold a positive version towards the big data in the future and I'm also on your side. The world cannot be totally objective. However, the Big data can undoubtedly give us a view of the trend and let us see the differences between the past, now and future. For me, it functions as a guide map. Although different people can have different explanations, it does inspire ourselves.

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  3. Biying ZhongSeptember 21, 2017 at 12:25 PM

    Xiaoyue,
    I am glad that you have a positive attitude towards the development of big data. But I still think that our attitude to big data should be very prudent. Although Big data can enhance us, at the same time, it might also mislead us. Such as the data is not clean, or the data is untrue (think about TAOBAO's fake comments and WEIBO's astroturfers). I think that in the future, when people are developing some technology on using bag data, they should also consider the how to filter big data and make big data more reliable.

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