The Human Face Of Big Data

Nearly everything we do today leaves an indelible digital trail: Where we live. What we search. What we read. Where we go. What we buy. What we say. All of this data is being recorded and stored. The rapid emergence of internet-connected data devices and the massive gathering and analyzing of real-time data are helping to create a central planetary nervous system in which individuals have become human sensors, helping map and measure the planet while, at the same time, mapping intimate details of the lives of each and every one of us. In the technology industry, this phenomenon is commonly known as “Big Data.” And there is a very human side to this data that often is overlooked or untold.

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Deb Roy’s Human Speechome Project, chronicled the language acquisition of a child over his first three years – not in the compromised environment of the lab, but at home. After his son’s birth, Deb wired his house with 11 video cameras, 14 microphones, and thousands of feet of cable — all controlled from the basement. Although the results are still being analyzed, early findings have revealed unexpected connections between the routines of everyday life at home and how one child learned his first words.

Courtesy of Deb Roy

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Dr. Carolyn McGregor and her team, Project Artemis at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, are still in the process of publishing and confirming their findings, but they hope that ICUs around the world will start using data as an early warning system. By harnessing millions of heartbeat measurements from the ICU each day, they were able detect a baby’s infection at least a day before it became symptomatic, giving physicians a potential 24-hour jump on treating and beating the bacteria, enabling babies to begin receiving lifesaving treatments for their infections before it’s too late.

Courtesy of © BSIP / Corbis 2012 / from "The Human Face of Big Data"

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Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and The Square. Dorsey has proven that Twitter – the web phenomenon of the last decade – wasn’t a fluke. Now more than a million small businesses and individuals are using the Square to accept credit card payments, something most of them have never been able to do before. Now they merely have to download Square software and attach a tiny magnetic strip reader to their iPad or Smartphone, and it becomes a virtual cash register.

Courtesy of Jeff Minton 2012 / "The Human Face of Big Data"

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Call it a “Peace Corps of geeks. ”That’s the phrase Jennifer Pahlka sometimes uses for Code for America, the San Francisco nonprofit she founded and runs. The goal of Code for America is a daunting one: to connect hotshot young web designers and developers with the least tech-savvy—and least tech-interested—sector of American life: local and state governments. “We want our public institutions to have the same advantages as the private sector,” says Pahlka in an interview with SmartPlanet.com.

Courtesy of Timothy Archibald 2012 / "The Human Face of Big Data"

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Facebook visualization. Paul Butler believes that visualizing data is like photography. Instead of starting with a blank canvas, he manipulates the lens used to present the data from a certain angle. When the data is the social graph of millions of Facebook users, there are many lenses through which you can view it. One that piqued his curiosity was the locality of friendship. He set out to create a visualization showing which cities had a lot of friendships between them. After a few minutes of rendering, the visualization that appeared on his screen was a surprisingly detailed map of the world—with lines that represented not coasts or rivers or political borders, but real human relationships … a friendship made while traveling, a family member abroad, an old college friend pulled away by various forces of life. The result is not just a pretty picture — it’s a reaffirmation of the impact and relationships people have as they connect across oceans and borders.

Courtesy of Paul Butler / "The Human Face of Big Data"

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A photo of a baby surrounded by strangers in the light of cameras, phones and electronic devices. During the first day of a baby’s life the amount of data generated by humanity is equivalent to 70 times the information contained in the Library of Congress. What will it mean to live in a world where every moment, from birth to death, is digitally chronicled and preserved in a vast cloud based databases, forever?

Courtesy of Catherine Balet “Strangers in the light” (Steidl) 2012/from “The Human Face of Big Data”

“The Human Face Of Big Data,” a gripping new one-hour documentary premiering nationally on PBS Wednesday, Feb. 24, 2016, examines the promises and perils of this unstoppable force that is now invisibly sweeping through our lives and is expected to have an impact on humanity and civilization 1,000 times greater than the internet itself. Narrated by actor Joel McHale, the award-winning film features compelling human stories, captivating visuals and in-depth interviews with dozens of pioneering scientists, entrepreneurs, futurists and experts to illustrate powerful new data-driven tools, which have the potential to address some of humanity’s biggest challenges, including health, hunger, pollution, security and disaster response.

The data revolution is unlike anything humanity has ever experienced. Now, every two days, the human race is generating as much data as was generated from the dawn of humanity through the year 2003. Today, individuals in the world’s major cities are exposed to as much information in a single day as their 15th-century ancestors were exposed to in a lifetime. With phones and devices serving as the “on-ramp” for billions of people to access the information network, technology has fundamentally changed the way people interact with everything. Our phones, computers, homes, cars, appliances and a multitude of objects are generating data that can be extracted and used on a mass scale, enabling us to collect, store and process vast quantities of data and then respond in real time.

The film marks a unique collaboration between the Smolan brothers, one a visionary in the field of photography and book publishing and the other an award-winning filmmaker of more than 60 features, documentaries and top network TV series, who teamed up on this multi-platform media project to shed light on a subject that both deem one of the most important impacting society today.

Directed and produced by award-winning filmmaker Sandy Smolan ("Rachel River," "The Click Effect") and based on the best-selling book of the same name by executive producer Rick Smolan, photojournalist and creator of the epic DAY IN THE LIFE series, “The Human Face Of Big Data” takes viewers on a visually stunning journey to illuminate an extraordinary movement permeating every aspect of our lives, transforming individuals and society in both minute and monumental ways.

The film features stunning real-time visualization of data, using state-of-the-art animations and graphics that illustrate the info streaming in from satellites, billions of sensors and GPS-enabled cameras and smart phones, which is now enabling us, as individuals and collectively as a society, to sense, measure and analyze vast quantities of raw information. The spectacular images allow us to view Big Data and see how it helps us to find patterns and meaning, and see how complex systems function to understand aspects of our existence in ways previously unimaginable.

“The Human Face Of Big Data” features conversations with 30 leading voices in the field of data science, artificial intelligence, technology and digital medicine, including (in alphabetical order): Linda Avey, co-founder of 23andMe; entrepreneur John Battelle of Federated Media; Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter and Square; New York Times journalist Charles Duhigg; Nathan Eagle of Jana and MIT; global security advisor and author Marc Goodman; MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito; Aaron Koblin, director of Google Creative Lab; author and futurist Tim O’Reilly; Jennifer Pahlka of Code for America; Erik Swan and Rob Das of Splunk; Jay Walker, director of TEDMED and more.

The film also looks at the dark side of data. As Edward Snowden and the release of the NSA documents have shown, the accessibility of all this data comes at a steep price. “The Human Face Of Big Data” explores our vulnerabilities in the new cyber era, spotlighting issues of personal privacy, government surveillance and civil liberties, and the implications for the future of democracy when people’s lives are chronicled and exposed to known and unknown entities.

Executive producers are Rick Smolan and Jerry Solomon. The film was edited by Daniel Oberle, with cinematography by Jacek Laskus and music by Philip Sheppard. “The Human Face Of Big Data” was produced by Against All Odds Productions in association with Luminous Content and CuriosityStream. The film was made possible through the generous support of Cisco and SAP. The project was underwritten by EMC with additional support from Cisco, SAP, VMware and FEDEX.