Brown Motion

The world we live in has rules.  And the citizens are expected to obey those rules.  Without order we get chaos.  Fighting entropy is hard.  Very hard. There was an entire TV series based on this notion called Law & Order.  Recently though there have been a spate of incidents where the watchers failed us.  From the near collapse of the capitalist economic system back in 2008 where the rating agencies failed at doing their job to the recent Boeing disasters where the FAA did not do theirs and 400 people paid with their lives, we are facing a scenario where the watchers need watching.  'Collusion' is a word making headlines these days. Coincidentally (I have started listening to podcasts on the way to work) a new podcast by one of my favorite authors, Michael Lewis has a show about umpires.  Or referees.  It is titled 'Against the Rules'.  It covers the topic of 'referees losing their authority'. Fairness and how humans enforce ...

I am contributing to it.  What I find amazing is that the big money is now in big data.  So the scam goes as follows. First create methods and tools to allow for a lot of people to spew out a lot of nonsensical data.  Then claim you have the magic bullets to harness all that big data.  Then claim that you can access the big data using weirdo sounding platforms like Hadoop. Then claim that using advanced SEO and Decision Scientists who would use analytics like a chef would use a spatula you can target the most valuable customers with the most relevant messages. Mining for information is more lucrative than mining for gold.  There is an inherent belief that all the data out there has nuggets and the big westward migration of the 1900s to pan for gold is now becoming the pan chewing PIO's (person of Indian origin) quest for the next IPO. In the process some of the established players are taking notice and offer the silver bullet of being a one-sto...