Roads versus public transport: for decades, these have been the battle lines in debates over transport in our cities. But a revolution in mobility is under way that will transform our thinking.
Part of CSIRO’s ASKAP antennas at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO) in Western Australia.
Australian SKA Office/WA Department of Commerce
It’s almost impossible for any human to spot something unknown or unusual in the massive amount of data collected by our telescopes. So we’re teaching an intelligent machine to search the data for us.
Precision public health has the potential to transform the global health sphere by ensuring that the right interventions are brought to the right people in the right places.
Data surveillance has become increasingly invasive and its scope has broadened.
Shifts in our communication infrastructures have reshaped the very possibilities of social order driven by markets and commercial exploitation.
Marc Smith/flickr
Nick Couldry, London School of Economics and Political Science
Capitalism has become focused on expanding the proportion of social life that is open to data collection and processing – as if the social itself has become the new target of capitalism’s expansion.
A big data analysis indicates the focus on service line replacement may only go so far at fixing Flint’s water issues.
George Thomas/flickr
By tapping into diverse data sources in Flint, researchers can predict vulnerable homes and even have found that home water service lines may not be the biggest contributor to lead poisoning.
An increasingly diverse array of geospatial, network and time-series data is being used to generate new perspectives and insights. Here we see air traffic in England and Wales visualised over satellite images.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/natspressoffice/
People in all manner of professions from economists and real estate agents to stockbrokers and doctors are beginning to recognise the huge potential and power of unconventional data.
There could be plenty of demand from the space tour guides of the near future.
Flickr/Pedro Vezini
Space tourists will need someone to show them around. This is just one of several jobs that currently don’t exist but are expected to be a reality with in a decade.
The Australian census is just one way to gather data on people. We also freely give out information in other ways that can be used to study many things, and maybe even predict an election result.
Imagine where working together on open data can get us?
Puzzle pieces image via www.shutterstock.com.
This method of crowdsourcing science legwork is ready to expand into other disciplines – and maybe the amateurs themselves can start calling some of the shots.
Predicting whether a child will commit a crime before their 18th birthday is fraught with problems.
Shutterstock/Tomsickova Tatyana
Machine learning is being used to see if it’s possible to predict whether someone will commit a crime some time in the future. But does this risk condemning people for a crime they haven’t committed?
A Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, similar to the one Nietzsche used.
Peter Mitterhofer
The writing process is different whether your instrument is a fountain pen, a crayon, a typewriter or a computer. What fingerprints does the technology leave on the product?
Real-time data on cities is changing the way they work.
Thomas Hawk/Flickr
Most industries tap into big data these days – meaning more and more jobs are opening up in this field. Here’s some background on the skills and qualities you’d use as a modern big data professional.
Schematic diagram of an aggregate made up of linked users, with the mathematical equation that describes this online pro-ISIS ecology.
Neil Johnson