Moreover, there are now many more people who interact with information. Between 1990 and 2005 more than 1 billion people worldwide entered the middle class. As they get richer they become more literate, which fuels information growth, notes Mr Cortada. The results are showing up in politics, economics and the law as well. “Revolutions in science have often been preceded by revolutions in measurement,” says Sinan Aral, a business professor at New York University. Just as the microscope transformed biology by exposing germs, and the electron microscope changed physics, all these data are turning the social sciences upside down, he explains. Researchers are now able to understand human behaviour at the population level rather than the individual level.
This time next year, I’ll (hopefully) be in the process of writing my Master’s Thesis at CBS. I’ve already started looking into potential subjects of research but they all circle around the same basic premise; the amount of data collected about human behavior is exploding.
I received a bachelor’s degree in Information Management last year, but perhaps it should have focused more on data management? It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg discussion, because what is more interesting – the raw data or the story told after combining the elements of data into information?
The story will help us understand – and change – our behavior based on patterns that are undesirable (“turn off the light”, “avoid driving down a congested Main Road”, “water this plant” etc.), and this is what could be interesting to examine further: What can make us change behavior? We all know candy is bad, but we keep eating it. Alcohol is terrible, but we keep drinking it. Burning fossil fuel is bad, but we keep doing it.
Is it only insight that makes us think twice about how we act and consume, or when we are directly punished?
If you have anything to share, don’t hesitate to share the links in the comment section. I’m collecting a lot of this already, but always need more:
Links tagged with data, information, sensors, everyware, ubicomp, patterns and behavior to name a few.