Big Data

National Bestseller

“No other book offers such an accessible and balanced tour of the many benefits and downsides of our continuing infatuation with data.”—Wall Street Journal

“What I’m certain about is that Big Data will be the defining text in the discussion for some time to come.”—Forbes.com It seems like “big data” is in the news every day, with new examples of how powerful algorithms are teasing out the hidden connections between seemingly unrelated things. Whether it is used by the NSA to fight terrorism or by online retailers to predict customers’ buying patterns, big data is a revolution occurring around us, in the process of forever changing economics, science, culture, and the very way we think. But it also poses new threats, from the end of privacy as we know it to the prospect of being penalized for things we haven’t even done yet, based on big data’s ability to predict our future behavior.

Big Data is the first big book about this earthshaking subject, with two leading experts explaining what big data is, how it will change our lives, and what we can do to protect ourselves from its hazards.

VIKTOR MAYER-SCHÖNBERGER is Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University. A widely recognized authority on big data, he is the author of over a hundred articles and eight books, of which the most recent is Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age. He is on the advisory boards of corporations and organizations around the world, including Microsoft and the World Economic Forum.

KENNETH CUKIER is the Data Editor of the Economist and a prominent commentator on developments in big data. His writings on business and economics have appeared in Foreign Affairs, the New York Times, the Financial Times, and elsewhere.