Book Review - Inescapable Data by Chris Stakutis and John Webster
Category Book Reviews
I just finished reading an outstanding book that examines the world of "Inescapable Data"... Chris Stakutis and John Webster's Inescapable Data - Harnessing the Power of Convergence.
Contents: The Inescapable Data Vision; The Connectivity Divide; Inescapable Data Fundamentals; From Warfare to Government, Connectivity Is Vitality; Pervading the Home; Connecting Medicine; Work Life - Oxymoron No Longer; Real-Time Manufacturing; Sports and Entertainment - Energizing Our Involvement; Connecting to Retail; Computer Storage Impacted by Inescapable Data; Super Computers, Visualization, and Networks; Inescapable Data in Perspective; Index
The authors explore how technology is allowing more and more devices to broadcast and interact with each other to create linkages that haven't even begun to be explored. What if your refrigerators could broadcast to your PDA when you're at the store to let you know what's in there? With RFID tags, it's a possibility. What if you could have access to the same telemetry data that pit crews have when you go to an racing event? Could your tennis racquet transmit force and angle information to a system that could analyze your game and help you become a better player? All of these things are technically possible, and the rapid advance of processing and storage power makes it much more likely to come to pass at an affordable price point. Besides talking about possibilities, they also explore how technology has to change in order to deal with this constant onslaught of data. Companies like Wal-mart generate terabytes of data from RFID every few days. What do you save? How do you analyze it? Where does it reside and for how long? And with data being stored in XML format, how likely is it that ordinary computer users will be able to write their own tools to analyze their data? Good chance it'll happen...
Probably the only thing they didn't cover in a lot of depth was the personal privacy issue. If retailers are tracking you via tags, sensors, and cameras from the time you walk in the door until you leave, you're passing a lot of information that will be stored about you. While there might be financial benefits to allowing that to happen, that benefit comes at a cost to personal privacy. The issue is acknowledged, but much more space is devoted to the potential benefits than to the potential abuses. Still, this is a book that will open your eyes to possibilities that seemed like science fiction not that very long ago.
Well worth reading to expand your vision...
I just finished reading an outstanding book that examines the world of "Inescapable Data"... Chris Stakutis and John Webster's Inescapable Data - Harnessing the Power of Convergence.
Contents: The Inescapable Data Vision; The Connectivity Divide; Inescapable Data Fundamentals; From Warfare to Government, Connectivity Is Vitality; Pervading the Home; Connecting Medicine; Work Life - Oxymoron No Longer; Real-Time Manufacturing; Sports and Entertainment - Energizing Our Involvement; Connecting to Retail; Computer Storage Impacted by Inescapable Data; Super Computers, Visualization, and Networks; Inescapable Data in Perspective; Index
The authors explore how technology is allowing more and more devices to broadcast and interact with each other to create linkages that haven't even begun to be explored. What if your refrigerators could broadcast to your PDA when you're at the store to let you know what's in there? With RFID tags, it's a possibility. What if you could have access to the same telemetry data that pit crews have when you go to an racing event? Could your tennis racquet transmit force and angle information to a system that could analyze your game and help you become a better player? All of these things are technically possible, and the rapid advance of processing and storage power makes it much more likely to come to pass at an affordable price point. Besides talking about possibilities, they also explore how technology has to change in order to deal with this constant onslaught of data. Companies like Wal-mart generate terabytes of data from RFID every few days. What do you save? How do you analyze it? Where does it reside and for how long? And with data being stored in XML format, how likely is it that ordinary computer users will be able to write their own tools to analyze their data? Good chance it'll happen...
Probably the only thing they didn't cover in a lot of depth was the personal privacy issue. If retailers are tracking you via tags, sensors, and cameras from the time you walk in the door until you leave, you're passing a lot of information that will be stored about you. While there might be financial benefits to allowing that to happen, that benefit comes at a cost to personal privacy. The issue is acknowledged, but much more space is devoted to the potential benefits than to the potential abuses. Still, this is a book that will open your eyes to possibilities that seemed like science fiction not that very long ago.
Well worth reading to expand your vision...
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Comments
If you have particular ideas on how to promote it, I'm
all ears!!!
Posted by Chris Stakutis At 12:26:49 On 21/01/2006 | - Website - |