by Angela Guess
Derrick Harris recently wrote an article about how privacy concerns could seriously hamper Big Data innovation: “The issue of data privacy on the web gets a lot of attention, thanks to the practices of sites such as Facebook and Google, but the positive aspects of those companies’ data practices tend to get overlooked. Not only does data drive the overall experience of our favorite sites and services, but it also drives innovation in broadly valuable technologies such as Hadoop and advanced analytics tools. As the government and policymakers, in general, strive to strike a framework for online data practices, they’d be wise to look at the issue from all angles.”
He continues, “The McKinsey Global Institute released an interesting report on big data last week, identifying key strategies for specific vertical markets that could save them hundreds of billions of dollars. The report highlights industries (e.g., health care and the public sector) and technologies (e.g., Hadoop and data warehousing) that we’ve covered before and that already are big data stars, as well as one very important issue to the future success of big data efforts: finding the appropriate balance between consumer privacy and business innovation. The authors don’t delve into too much detail on this topic, but I give them credit for mentioning it at all, because it’s a deep, multi-faceted issue that could fill an entire report of its own, and that has broad implications beyond the world of big data.”
photo credit: mel_rowling
