Using aggressive sales tactics and rough elbows, the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure came to dominate the breast cancer charity world. It became controversial after suing other charities that used some of the same phrases or symbols, even when they would have seemed to be in the public domain. (The word "cure" and the color pink were the subjects of two such lawsuits.)
The Komen group then abruptly defunded Planned Parenthood and other service groups, seemingly for political reasons. The resulting controversy helped the debate in one very real sense: it provided an object lesson in the dangers of Bigger, even in the world of charity.
5. Bigger Corporate Data
The recent NSA scandals have revealed the dangers of Bigger Data. But that phenomenon's closely linked to Bigger's other areas of overgrowth, especially in finance and investment. The scandal and controversy surrounding Facebook's IPO (initial public offering) offered a glimpse into the intersection of Mega-Banks, Mega-Investors, and Mega-Data.
Every large enterprise is now pursuing bigger data. A new private study suggests that there continue to be fewer corporate data centers in the United States, but that each is correspondingly larger. Highly centralized databases leave businesses, economies and societies more vulnerable to disruptions caused by accidents, natural disasters, or acts of terror.
The Big Data vendors include Twitter, Facebook and Google. But they also include niche forms of Big Data, like banking. Newly launched banking investigations involve something called "dark pools," an alternative form of trading that takes place outside the normal stock markets. There is now evidence that the banks and service companies whose data platforms provide this service have been "front-running" trades, using customer information from their data systems to enrich themselves.
Even news organizations are entering the data-selling business. For $2,000 a month, Thomson Reuters offers a service called "ultra-low latency" which gives subscribers access to key economic reports two seconds before they're released to the public. As Business Insider notes, "two seconds in ... trading time is an eternity." That's because stock markets are computerized Big Data operations, too, and transactions can occur at nearly light-speed.
Big Data corporations are typically currently valued well in excess of what its real revenues would suggest. That's certainly true of Facebook, because the world of Bigger believes in the power of data -- and Facebook has it.
Most Facebook users would probably say that its interface is hard to use. Its founders aren't wealthy because they're brilliant programmers. They're not visionaries, either. They thought they were creating a relatively small set of social networks for colleges. But they stumbled onto something powerful -- the power of data that users volunteered about themselves -- and they exploited it aggressively before anyone else could compete with them.
That's how the world of Bigger works. You don't need to be the best. You need to be the first. Then you need to be aggressive in order to stay the biggest. The forces of Bigger will do the rest.
6. Bigger Government Data
Mega-data is changing our government, too. The Obama administration's "Big Data Initiative" suggests a mentality which believes Big Data is more useful than other forms of information.
Big Data has already created a national security apparatus of staggering proportions, as Dana Priest and William Arkin reported for the Washington Post. Large databases can provide enormously useful information, but they can be a distraction too. As Priest and Arkin observed, "lack of focus, not lack of resources," prevented law enforcement officials from stopping the Fort Hood shootings.
That can happen when too much data is presented without adequate screening. Reports from a smaller data initiative -- perhaps even an old-fashioned warrant and search on the radical cleric with whom he was corresponding -- might have been much more effective in preventing this tragedy.
We should learn from experience before assuming that the best thing to do with Big Data is make it even bigger. But that's not the plan: Amazon, one of the corporate world's biggest data players, has been hired to create a "private cloud" system for the CIA at a cost of $600 billion. That's more than half a trillion dollars. For what, exactly? We don't know. Perhaps to ensure that the same technology which keeps recommending those novels you don't want to read guides the thinking of our intelligence community.
With Bigger Data comes greater temptation. Thanks to the Center for Media and Democracy's review of Freedom of Information Act documents, we now know that at least one national security "fusion center" strayed from its anti-terrorism mission in order to analyze data on citizens conducting peaceful protests. Why? Because Jamie Dimon, the CEO of Bigger bank JPMorgan Chase, was coming to town and didn't want to confront protesters.
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