by Angela Guess
Mike Wheatley of Silicon Angle recently wrote, “Big Data’s reputation has taken a bit of a battering lately thanks to allegations that the NSA is collecting and storing people’s web and phone records, leading to a wider debate about the appropriateness of such extensive data-gathering operations. But this negative publicity detracts from the reality of Big Data today, which for the most part will only benefit society as a whole. There’s more to these massive data sets than simply catching terrorists (or spying on law abiding citizens), as you’ll see with the following recent developments.”
He continues, “One story that caught my eye recently relates how ‘spying’ on people’s public data can actually help medical professionals to save lives. Data can be gathered from many different sources, but few are as superior as Twitter, and not just because of its widespread user-base that’s spread across the globe. More important, tools such as TwitterHose facilitate this data calection, allowing anyone to download 1% of tweets made during a specified hour at random, giving researchers a nice cross-section of the Twitterverse.”
