by Angela Guess
The UK government has started to use Big Data to measure national happiness and well-being. A recent article reports, the UK Office of National Statistics “has already surveyed 20,000 people on four different emotional and existential questions, such as ‘to what extent do you feel the things you do in your life are worthwhile?’ Is this an absurd waste of tax dollars, or an important new frontier for quantitative research?”
The article author writes, “The UK’s commitment to open data platforms implies to me that this kind of data will someday be available programmatically for analysis, pattern detection, alert monitoring and cross-referencing with other data sets, thus enabling new acts of creativity, self-awareness and innovation. (Or creepy, authoritarian psychographic monitoring and strategic buy-offs when citizens’ anger flares ups in a hamlet.) What data could be more important as a platform than data about meaning in the human experience? That’s presuming that the quantification of such qualitative matters is possible and can be well executed. It’s a type of project that a growing number of governments around the world are undertaking.”
photo credit: mrdarkroom
