Big Picture Science for 09/24/12 - Big Data

Big Picture Science - Big Data

It’s all in the numbers. The trick is, finding what you’re looking for. But that’s the name of the game with big data. We have a giga-gigabyte of information, and combing through it will lead to new cures for disease, new discoveries about the cosmos, or clues to our social and economic behavior.

But is big data Big Brother? You leave a little bit of yourself behind with each mouse click. Discover how surveillance and privacy issues bubble out of the mix, as the terabytes keep flowing in.

Plus one man’s quest to know himself through the numbers as he records everything – and we do mean everything – about his body.

Guests:

• Atul Butte – Associate professor, division chief, systems medicine, Stanford University
• Larry Smarr – Professor of computer science, University of California, San Diego, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, (Calit2)
• Karen Nelson – Microbiologist, director of the Rockville Campus of the J. Craig Venter Institute
• Gerry Harp – Physicist, and Director of the Center for SETI Research at the SETI Institute
• Deirdre Mulligan – Assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Information and faculty director of the Berkeley Center of Law and Technology
• Ken Goldberg – Professor of engineering, information and art at the University of California, Berkeley

Permalink: http://radio.seti.org/episodes/Big_Data

You can listen to this and other episodes at http://radio.seti.org/, and be sure to check out Blog Picture Science, the companion blog to the radio show.