Book Review: Ethics and Data Science

Ethics and Data Science by Mike Loukides

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Every data scientist or software engineer working with Big Data should read this book! It's short and to the point, distilling what could be a confusing consideration of ethics into a few simple approaches, which will make a big difference for any applied project. Starting with the obvious, pledges and creeds, it quickly shows why they're inadequate. Then, the authors discuss the checklist approach, which is applied, systematic, and reproducible. The book gives practical examples of ethical challenges, showing how easily unexamined projects with noble intentions can go awry! Just raising awareness is a big take-away from the book - and if teams develop and apply the checklist approach, it's far more likely they'll deliver solutions that actually "Walk the Talk" of consumer privacy and responsible data management.

Semantic search example

A fascinating example of semantic search from Google.

The Memristor - Putting Moore's law back on track

Haven't heard much at large from HP Labs until this, which I heard Meg Whitman reference several times in a recent talk she gave. Likely this puts the AI evolutionary curve back on track, perhaps making the extrapolation discussed in Louis Del Monte's book increasingly plausible :-)

eTextbooks - Who's working on what

Interesting recap of eTextbook players and directions in the Sri Lankan Sunday Times. Much more going on in this area than meets the eye.

Industries experiencing disruptive change

Locating disruptive change is a big deal when investing for growth; it's become a catch-phrase for investors and a holy grail of sorts for the shrewd. From my perspective, I see a number of industries undergoing disruptive change and with the spread of technology, there will be others, too.

Some to watch right now:

• Learning - What it means to get an education, how it happens, availability to learning resources, and cost are all factors ramping up disruptive change in the learning industry. MOOCs (massively open on-line courses) are gaining traction (Coursera, Khan Academy, and Udacity). Helping students connect to colleges, learning resources, experiences, and each other is another area to watch (Chegg, AfterCollege, Zinch, Facebook, etc). Publishers and distribution networks (No Starch Press, Packt Publishers, O'Reilly, Amazon, Apple, etc) are experiencing and injecting change, too.
• Ticketing and Entertainment - the high cost tickets and events is another area ripe for change; new players such as Brown Paper Tickets are taking a fresh approach, which will inject change in this marketplace.
• Nanotechnology and Materials - There are so many emerging possibilities that it's hard to appreciate them all. The implications to the medical field (diagnostics, treatments, prostheses, augmentation) and industrial fields (electronics, batteries, sensors, solenoids, monitoring devices, 3D printing) are staggering, not to mention what will happen as small amounts of intelligence get added, too; enabling devices to report, confer, and decide.
• Food production, distribution, and nutrition - Initiatives to buy and eat locally (farm to fork), to take control of preparation, to use fresh and simple ingredients, etc are all introducing positive changes. New styles of farming (smaller scale, organic, specialized, and strategic) are making a difference, too. Some examples: Farm Fresh to You, Polyface Farms, Full Circle, Jacobs / Del Cabo, local farmer's markets, etc.
• Software Development and Computing - How it happens and the tools to make it efficient, productive, inherently secure, and sustainable continues to evolve. The Agile Manifesto started a revolution that's still in progress, as it requires dedicating significant resources (an organization must maintain a continuous integration / delivery process, implying significant computing and staff resources, although I suspect virtual machines and cloud computing are lowering cost barriers, too). The tooling now available to software developers is amazing (Eclipse and other IDEs, build management, defect tracking and database systems, testing frameworks, native language presentation and translation technologies, and multi-platform support). Where I think growth is needed is seamless support for multiple displays (web, mobile, and tablet) and efficient and affordable team management tools.

The Printed Media Revolution

Something's going on in the world of publishing and reading the written word. Maybe not nearly as big as the printing press at the beginning, but a revolution's brewing never less.

For example, check out the discussion about the Amazon Kindle on C|Net's site, and you'll come away with the feeling of a pending "change in the wind".

I believe the shift to digital publication and reading has the potential to turn the whole concept of printed media on its ear. But the jury's still out on how it will unfold, and the price tag is too high to make paper "yesterday".

What strikes me about the overall discussion are the novel ideas voiced by the end users. Being able to scan a UPC or ISBN from your own library for access on a digital reader, or checking out books from a library website for immediate download, or searching your entire on-board library, etc. Now those are really interesting ideas *:-)