T
In the
story of Hansel and Gretel, Hansel has the brilliant foresight to leave
breadcrumbs on the winding forest path so that he and his sister may find their
way home again. Unfortunately his plan
did not take into account the hungry birds that used his path markers for other
more nourishing needs. In a similar but
different manner, Americans have for years been leaving electronic breadcrumbs (from smartphones, social media
postings, purchase records, emails, traffic sensors, GPS units, etc.) behind us
as we travel along our ever-more technologically-laden path. And this isn't a handful of breadcrumbs that
can lead us back to where we started; rather we’re looking at a solar-sized pile
of data (metaphorically speaking) which, once we harness it, could propel us
into the future. This is Big Data within
which NPR’s
Adam Frank believes is a “hyper-resolution map of the world’s behavior in
space and time.”
