UC Irvine finds medical uses for Hadoop in improving care

The Second Machine Age: All roads lead to machine learning

Pew data points on NSA surveillance and public

Just caught up with a Pew Research Center/USA TODAY poll conducted in January that estimated overall approval of NSA surveillance had declined since last summer, when stories first broke based on Edward Snowden’s leaked information.... Democrats remain more supportive of the NSA surveillance program than Republicans, though support is down across party lines....While most of the public wants the government to pursue a criminal case against Snowden, young people offer the least support for his prosecution....

http://www.people-press.org/2014/01/20/obamas-nsa-speech-has-little-impact-on-skeptical-public/

Mystic crystal data pondered

Composer Philip Shepard sees links
between data and music.
He scored a film on chess
master-cum-crazy-man Bobbie Fisher.

The near mystic quality some people attribute to data should be some cause for concern. Something doesn’t usually go from familiar and forgettable to world-changing and magical overnight.  What portion of today's data paeans ("I love data") ("Data is the new punk") will flower dandelion-like then drift off on wind? It is hard to say.

But a feeling can hold that some of this is good, worthy. I've had a chance to see a few conference keynotes that dabbled more in the art – less in the science - of data. And some ring true. At the recent Enterprise Data World event, there was a session by a data strategist from Marvel comics that made the case for applying graphing database architecture to the 'need' to rationalize different incarnations of different super heroes as data elements.  Entertaining, yes -but not an effective poster for data as a new way of being. But another session, one led by composer Philip Sheppard, had more such merit. The Marvel guy seemed to admit that - by noting that he wouldn’t want to follow Sheppard's presentation.

AT EDW14, Philip Shepard discussed information as symphony. Sheppard does film scores - says #Music is #data. @PhilipSheppard #EDW14 He makes a case that data is poetic. It is true, as he point out, you can look a little and see lyrical whiffs in graphical renderings on data on public bicycle use, the slipstream of air pressure readouts for an F1 racer.

But really, the place where his insights into the special nature of data bear the most fruits is the place he is closest to – music. "What is music? He asks. It's loads of things. He answers. It's transformative. It is a form of solace. You can wallow in it and you don’t really know why. Memory is so connected to music. People learn whole caches of text, when there is music attached. Once it probably was the major way of encoding history. Much can be learnt from the way musicians cope with huge amounts of data under duress. The basic music message can change over time, depending, eg., on players' emphasis. Sheppard's words to the data folks assembled: "When you are dealing with things you have to look at them as fluid I think we are starting to look at #data that way."

He has a point. When I was at the symphony once it strikingly dawned on me that this was a message from a human in time. Ludwig. I wrote about it on my art blog (MoonTravellerHerald) under the persona of Shroud Jr.  
Was in the symphony one day – many rainy years ago -- and Beethoven’s message was just crystalline to me. Me, Shroud Jr. Like a telegraph message through the foam of time – Beethoven heard the birds, the guns, he was losing his hearing. He was writing it down. Sending it out. Shroud Jr. was pickin up on it.
Truth be told, I was taken away with Sheppard's music, and can't do his argument justice here! I don’t find much on the web of his that helps directly either.  But some links follow. Communication, music – an interesting path always. Now, revise as communication, music, data. – Jack Vaughan

Related
http://philipsheppard.bandcamp.com/album/bobby-fischer-against-the-world
http://philipsheppard.com/philip-sheppard-biography/
http://edw2014.dataversity.net/sessionPop.cfm?confid=79&proposalid=6305
http://philipsheppard.com/

Big White House Data Report 1

The White House has released a new report on big data and privacy. It has not yet released a report on the suspect and widely reported activities of intelligence agencies. In the NYT's estimation, the report does fine job of laying out some of the benefits and problems associated with extensive data collection and its use in business. Among the benefits is such data's value in medical research. But, the NYT in an editorial page article today asks, cant that same data also be used to discriminate in sales or services? The editorial (A Long Way to Privacy Safeguards) commends the report for its recommendation that law enformecemnt agencids seek court approval to access gidital content like email in the same way they do for physical letters – this as the Supreme Court is poised to consider warrantless searches of cell phones.  The story makes the point that consumers lose control over their information from the moment that it is collected, and the point of collection is the point of infection in data privacy.