Great Expectations: The Truth About Big Data

As Crawford and Jason Schultz, a professor at New York University Law School, wrote in their paper: "When these data sets are cross-referenced with traditional health information, as big data is designed to do, it is possible to generate a detailed picture about a person's health, including information a person may never have disclosed to a health provider."

What does Big Data have to do with health, and with the truths we cling to?  

If we were to be totally honest - to our medical professionals, to ourselves, to our politicians and our pollsters - well, we're not, are we?  There is the life that we feel expected to lead - perfect parent, perfect employee, getting enough hours in at the gym, drinking in moderation and offering meaningful contributions to civic society.  Projects have to be done perfectly, and on time; kids need help with their homework, plus healthy meals; individuals need breathing space.

Those expectations and what's actually possible don't mesh.  Something has to give, but as there are social consequences to not being a superhero, we lie about it - as much to ourselves as anyone else.  Instead of facing and addressing the structural issues that lie around us, we have a fourth cup of coffee, or take an Advil, or maybe we see the doc and get something stronger.  Whatever it takes to fit in and keep going.  

Then, there's how we look at the world around us - kids that show attitude to their parents are problem children; the example the parents themselves set isn't relevant any more than the behaviour of a Mayor is in stetting the tone for their City.  Crack addicts have something wrong with them, as people.  Criminals are animals.  The "I" at the centre of the universe, however, is fine just as is - only busy. 

A lie is a misrepresentation of the truth and can take many forms.  Saying "sure, boss, that report will be done just as you wanted" when you know it isn't feasible is a lie; you probably know the boss isn't going to read the whole thing anyway, you have a scapegoat in mind or if you're a workaholic, you know that you'll go above and beyond the accepted parameters of work to do it.

Telling the kids "just finish your homework/clean up/stay out of my way and I'll (insert bribe here)" when you have no intention of following through sets false expectations, the first of many your child will meet in life.  Your rationale, self-serving as it is, probably has a hint of self-preservation to it, too - maybe you need that extra time to finish that report your boss is demanding be done, tomorrow, and be perfect.

Rushing in to work, telling your kids you can't be late - then spending a half-hour at the water cooler or checking Facebook, when you get there is a faleshood, too.  Maybe, because home has become a place to release tension from work, you look forward to getting out; maybe your professional relationships have become your family ones and you feel more relaxed in their company than with your family.

If you're that employer, and the report-writing directions you gave your employee were nebulous because you don't really know what you want and the timelines arbitrary, because time pressure's really the only motivational tool in your box, you've been dishonest to both yourself and your employee.  You know that business hasn't been as robust as it was, that the market's changing but uncertain of what comes next and afraid to look anything less than confident, you're downloading responsibility for setting expectations to your employee.

What you end up with is lack-lustre results, stressed-out employees who will photocopy their kids' homework on the company machine and then go home and snap at those kids saying "don't say I never do anything for you."  Nobody wins.

Telling the world that you had no idea bad deeds were being committed by your team, on your watch, fits the same bill.

We all live in fractured, confabulated realities; we're all living unsustainable lies.  Why?  Because we want to believe that we are independent and consequence-free.  We tell ourselves we live in separate worlds of work, home, friends, groups, etc.; nobody is making any effort to connect the dots between them, or between us and them.  At the middle of all this push and pull, however, are individuals caught up in a system that isn't designed to recognize them as systems unto themselves.

This is where Big Data comes in.

We should rightly be frightened of the information Big Data will reveal about our selves.  It was ages ago that Target, a retail chain, was able to use the data they'd accumulated to determine a teen-aged girl was pregnant before her father knew.  Political microtargeting is completely changing the way politicians develop their policy wares and market them to nice audiences, to the detriment of social democracy.

Forget the NSA or the CSEC - Political Parties and corporate giants are mapping out your every purchase, your every keystroke to find out what makes you tick, where your interests lie and how to manipulate them.  The reverse is also coming true - with Wikileaks, Anonymous and the odd Edwards Snowden, the Big Data Mandardins are finding their own choices increasingly laid bare.

The Information Age, in fits and spurts, is painting a photo mosaic of how the different parts of our lives connect and impact each other - work stress, home burn-out and the resulting hospital visit can be mapped out in infographics, clearly demonstrating the relationships between them.  Of course, the people on the outside will look for the pieces that they see as relevant to them; the salesfolk want to know what and how to sell you; politicians, same.  Employers primarily want to know how you're spending your time and if you present any risks to them from your online activities.

There's another trend emerging in tandem with micro-targeting, though; that's service systems theory.  Service providers are beginning to glean the truth; that the feudal approach they have been taking to service delivery is unsustainable.  They can't afford to ignore the forest any more.  As such, governments and agencies are looking laterally, accumulating more information and seeing how the pieces fit together.

Nowhere is this more clear than in healthcare.  Call it the social butterfly effect; all the ripples in individual lives brush up against each other with by now, expected consequences.  The spaces we live in impact the direction of those ripples, too.

As we learn more and more about individual behaviours and how those behaviours interact both positively and negatively, we can more accurately forecast outcomes (and understand the results we have now).  The stressed-out employee who spends too little time with their family, no time exercising but a disproportionate amount of time at the doctors is seen not as an individual failure but a social consequence.

There are those out there who want to use your data for their financial benefit, but there are also those who want to use everyone's data to create a more sustainable system.  No one person can be at the centre of each individual, though - a body needs a brain, but every cell needs a nucleus.

If every individual had awareness, training and tools to map their own lives, they could take ownership of their own data and how their own pieces fit into the bigger puzzle of society.  If Service Providers stopped functioning like silos and began to recognize themselves as players on a team, they could better coordinate their efforts, creating both efficiencies and superior results.  

We're stronger together, but only when we make the conscious efforts to internalize that no person is an island.

And that's the truth of it.

I'm here to say enough is enough with this Mayor who thinks he can get away with anything by twisting the truth, saying just some of the truth or not telling it straight at all.