When Open Data makes large troves of data easily accessible online, interesting insights can emerge – some expected, and some less so, as the case of a website in the US offering powerful visualizations of census data exemplifies. The Wall Street Journal, reporting on it, talked to Professor Mayer-Schönberger to make sense of the these developments and put them in a larger perspective.
Today (March 9, 2013) renowned Internet commentator and acclaimed author Evgeny Morozov reviews “Big Data” in the Wall Street Journal, and praises it: “No other book offers such an accessible and balanced tour of the many benefits and downsides of our continuing infatuation with data.”
Economist journalist Kenneth Cukier and Professor Mayer-Schönberger (co-authors of the bestseller “Big Data”) penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on March 7, 2013, entitled “The Financial Bonanza of Big Data” arguing that Big Data will have a big impact on the balance sheet of companies as we begin to realize the hidden value of data, and companies begin to report it as assets. Their op-ed spurred a lively debate.