For three decades, Rick Smolan—a former Time, Life and National Geographic photographer—has taken global cultural snapshots through his Day in the Life series of coffee table books that explore a time capsule of activity involving a country, discipline, or issue.
The projects—produced by the New York-based Against All Odds
Productions—which Smolan runs with wife and co-author, Jennifer Erwitt,
and COO Katya Able, take around 18 months and involve upwards of 200
writers and photographers around the globe.
Their latest book, The Human Face of Big Data, out
this week, takes a more encompassing approach to a topic than its
predecessors. Tackling the idea of Big Data—mankind’s ability to
collect, analyze, and act on an unprecedented amount of information in
real time—the book uses photos, essays, and articles (including one by yours truly)
to examine the phenomenon, and how individuals and companies are
harnessing it for human benefit, while raising concerns about data
ownership and privacy invasion.
“Having now spent a year looking closely at this emerging world of big
data, I hope the book will spark a global conversation about both the
tremendous potential good and the concerns we all need to have about who
owns data that you and I generate,” says Smolan. "Right now it's
primarily companies and governments who are thinking about the uses of
Big Data. It's really important that each of us also thinks about how
this is going to affect our lives."
The project employs Big Data as a storytelling device and business
platform. In the two months leading up to the book’s release, the
Against All Odds team organized a three-city technology networking event and unveiled a website
to gather digital behavior data from 300 000-plus anonymous volunteers.
The results will be available free to researchers and academics next
year. The project is self-published from sponsorship by several
technology companies, primarily EMC2, along with Cisco Systems, VMWare, Tableau Software, Originate, plus FedEx. It’s the first coffee table book to use the Aurasma mobile app,
which triggers related multimedia when readers hold smartphone and
tablet cameras to yellow key graphics on its pages. There’s also an iPad app, with profits going to charity: water.
Hopeful But Wary
The book is a hopeful look at Big Data, highlighting its impact on
agricultural efficiency, weather and earthquake prediction, fertility
and genome mapping, space junk, crime solving, eradicating disease, and
tracking endangered species, to name a few.
In one particularly striking example, The Artificial Retina—looking like something straight out of Star Trek—Weill
Cornell Medical College’s Sheila Nirenberg used Big Data to circumvent
certain types of blindness, such as that caused by damaged retinal
photoreceptor cells. Her team employs high-speed, parallel processing to
embed custom software into microprocessors and cameras to be built into
eyeglasses. The camera images are translated into code (in the form of
flashing lights) that can be transmitted by still healthy ganglion cells
and understood by the brain.
But with hope comes concern. That's Smolan's take on J. Craig Venter’s
Synthetic Genomics in La Jolla, Calif., which also relies on massive
computer processing, to create genetic sequencing for new types of
bacteria, algae, and plants to assist in industry and replace fossil
fuels. “He is patenting new forms of life,” says Smolan. “While these
new forms are being designed for human good, it does make you think of
unintended consequences, like Frankenstein.”
