{"id":1858,"date":"2015-12-01T02:58:04","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T02:58:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/listheory.prattsils.org\/?p=1858"},"modified":"2015-12-01T02:58:04","modified_gmt":"2015-12-01T02:58:04","slug":"sciencescapes-approach-to-big-data-in-the-realm-of-scientific-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/2015\/12\/01\/sciencescapes-approach-to-big-data-in-the-realm-of-scientific-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Sciencescape\u2019s Approach to Big Data in the Realm of Scientific Research"},"content":{"rendered":"

The current image of consumer technology, personal computers and front-end applications, is one of simplicity; small boxes that house smaller components and microchips, departing further and further away from the hulking, esoteric, push-pin and vacuum tube monoliths of the past. This is, of course, ideal, as the growingly tech minded society compels its citizens to participate more wholly within its self-designated bounds.<\/p>\n

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Even Google\u2019s server rooms express the hushed, confident, uniformity of its homepage<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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But this picture belies the massive data swarm on the other side of the front end. We might only catch glimpses of it through our interfaces, but Big Data is consuming the world, for good and ill.<\/span><\/p>\n

In their article \u201cCRITICAL QUESTIONS FOR BIG DATA,\u201d Danah Boyd & Kate Crawford characterize the concept:<\/span><\/p>\n

We define Big Data as a cultural, technological, and scholarly phenomenon that rests on the interplay of: <\/span><\/p>\n

(1) Technology: maximizing computation power and algorithmic accuracy to gather, analyze, link, and compare large data sets. <\/span><\/p>\n

(2) Analysis: drawing on large data sets to identify patterns in order to make economic, social, technical, and legal claims. <\/span><\/p>\n

(3) Mythology: the widespread belief that large data sets offer a higher form of intelligence and knowledge that can generate insights that were previously impossible, with the aura of truth, objectivity, and accuracy (663).<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This interplay implies the Big Data approach to research and thought, where the potential of technology to facilitate, manipulate, process, and analyse torrents of data roots the belief that Big Data holds meaningful value in understanding the world thus constructed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sciencescape<\/span><\/i> very much falls under the banner of this paradigm: it\u2019s data set, the universe of scientific academic research and journal articles. I am intensely interested in the site, because of its attempt to organize, for our ease of access, a nebula that doubles in output every nine years (Van Noorden). To this end, the site claims to have indexed 24 million articles.<\/span><\/p>\n

This number, in itself, is not impressive, as big academic indexes are common. Instead, the novelty arises from <\/span>Sciencescape<\/span><\/i>\u2019s<\/span> method of presentation and management. Here is a video from their About <\/a>section:<\/span><\/p>\n