Analyzing electronic data from many doctors’ experiences with many patients, we can move ever closer to answering the age-old question: what is truly best for each patient?
Big data studies often use easily available user-generated data from the Internet. Researchers assume that this data offers a window into reality. It doesn’t necessarily.
If smart cities run on big data and algorithms that channel only ‘relevant’ information and opinions to us, how do we maintain the diversity of ideas and possibilities that drives truly smart cities?
By linking censuses through time or by combining other information with the census, many more important policy questions can be answered than if we used one dataset alone.
Computers are getting better and better at the jobs that previously made sense for researchers to outsource to citizen scientists. But don’t worry: there’s still a role for people in these projects.
Political campaigns today are presented as products of bottom-up participation, not top-down direction. But even if a campaign appears grassroots-driven, it’s likely to be run from the centre.