David Bodanis
Viral Statistics
Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think
By Viktor Mayer-Schönberger & Kenneth Cukier
John Murray 242pp £20 order from our bookshop
Most books about the internet are written by excitable youngsters who inhabit the bodies of middle-aged men. This one is different, for the authors have identified one of the very rare moments when a fundamental shift in government, business and even our view of causality is taking place.
The reason ‘Big Data’ is so important is that, unlike email or even Facebook, it’s not just a mechanism that lets us do, albeit more efficiently, what we were always going to do – send messages, say, or link with friends. Instead, it’s more like the invention of the microscope, or financial accounting, or time-lapse photography: it’s a new tool that allows us to see activities hitherto invisible to human awareness.
Here is an example of the old approach compared to the new. In 2009 the dangerous flu virus H1N1 was spreading around the world. In America, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta shifted to high gear. All doctors were instructed
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'There are at least two dozen members of the House of Commons today whose names I cannot read without laughing because I know what poseurs and place-seekers they are.'
From the archive, Christopher Hitchens on the Oxford Union.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/mother-of-unions
Chuffed to be on the Curiosity Pill 2020 round-up for my @Lit_Review piece on swimming, which I cannot wait to get back to after 10+ months away https://literaryreview.co.uk/different-strokes https://twitter.com/RNGCrit/status/1351922254687383553
'The authors do not shrink from spelling out the scale of the killings when the Rhodesians made long-distance raids on guerrilla camps in Mozambique and Zambia.'
Xan Smiley on how Rhodesia became Zimbabwe.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/what-the-secret-agent-saw