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Reining in tech: responsibility, regulation and education

Our Christmas episode was recorded under the auspices of Janus, the god of all things related to time. Now into the month named after him, the SmallDataForum reviews its predictions and looks at the year ahead:

Will Europe ‘take back control’, or will commercial pressures curb big tech’s enthusiasm? Will 2018 be the breakthrough year for chatbots and DPAs (digital personal assistants), both in business and personal use? How will continuous technological and economic transformations affect connections between people?

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Looking forward by looking back

Janus

As the Small Data Forum progresses through its early teenage years – our latest podcast is episode 14 already – regular co-hosts Thomas Stoeckle, Neville Hobson, and Sam Knowles are taking the opportunity to look forward by looking back.

Patients of our own medicine, you might say, we’re using the year end and what we’ve observed and learned in 2017 to enter the predictive analytics business.

We take our inspiration from Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, transitions, and time, after whom January is named. A sculpture of Janus appears at the top of this blog, from the Vatican Museum.

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1984 meets Pavlov’s dogs – navigating a moral maze of private and public interests

Trust

“Trust, but verify” is a phrase that was used often by Ronald Reagan. It is more than a little ironic that this is originally a Russian proverb (Doveryai, no proveryai).

Trust is also what links the various topics in episode 13 of our podcast.

From Chinese citizen scores to alleged irregularities in the UK referendum and the US presidential election, the implications of GDPR and the prospects of blockchain: trust is the glue that should hold together the fabric of such interactions, in private as well as public contexts.

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12: Scope and scale of Fake News and GDPR

Fake News

September was PR Measurement Month, and October is conference season. Not just in UK politics, but also for a number of trade bodies in communications, PR and media monitoring.

From AMEC and the PRCA, to FIBEP, ICCO, PRSA – there are plenty of awards and some reflections on where we’ve come from, where we are, and where we are likely to be going.

Fake news remains the centre of attention.

Tuesday’s New York Times ran the story How Russia Harvested American Rage to Reshape US Politics.  As an issue that affects the democratic process in Western societies, this continues to have the mainstream media in its thrall. It has, as Sam puts it, “upset the liberal apple cart.”

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Make sense of Big Data with the #SmallDataForum podcast

Big Data

Welcome to www.smalldataforum.com, the new home of the Small Data Forum podcast.

What started off as a breakfast seminar in May 2016 about the business value of Big Data quickly became a regular monthly podcast.

16 months on, our purpose remains unchanged: Neville, Sam, and I strive to make sense of Big Data for business and communications.

In this time, we have produced 11 episodes, all in the same format of a sober German aiming – and occasionally failing – to reign in two unruly effervescent Brits. And not just in discussions of Brexit.

And I’m sure the outcome of the German elections will form a topic for our next gathering. As I’m writing this, Frau Dr. Merkel wins a fourth term in office, in all likelihood in a ‘Jamaica’ coalition with the Greens and the Liberals. And a far-right party is winning perhaps more than 13%.

How good were the polls? What role did fake news play? Was it a Big Data election? Answers in the next podcast!

So yes, the format will continue, and in future we will also have regular guests to widen our, and perhaps our audience’s, horizon.

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