For the current Single Frame Story prompt “stream,” I go on a bit of a pictorial rant about BIG DATA, the latest marketing buzz phrase that involves sifting through every grain of our digital stream to in effect box in identities and personalities.
I am not at all a fan of what Seth Godin calls “rearview window analysis,” which presumes the past will equal the future. In fact BIG DATA insists upon a leaning backwards until it becomes an outright push down that slippery slope. At least that’s my gut reaction to it. And while I wanted to go on a text-based rant about BIG DATA (and maybe one day I still will), Seth Godin’s post on it says it better than I could. (He also includes a link to a simultaneously fascinating and alarming NYT article on the intersection of BIG DATA and script writing.) I really love the title of his post: “Perhaps you could just make something awesome instead.”
The photo I created is far from awesome, but it reflects my feelings about this topic pretty well. It’s entitled “Shrug This Lifestream.”
Michele Hyacinth 