A readable guide for the non–IT set.
A pleasing excursion into the daunting terrain of computer-driven information.
British comedian and writer Harkness debuts with an anecdote-laden account of our propensity for making a data set out of anything that can be turned into numbers. “Routinely collected, stored, shared, linked together and analysed,” big data, writes the author, are now used to monitor diseases, predict crime, shape our elections, surveil our private moments, and track our purchases at supermarket checkouts—an extraordinary reach for a term coined in 2006. With a focus on how this enormous information-gathering has affected each major area of our lives, Harkness visited experts in places from Brooklyn to Silicon Valley and engaged in lucid conversations about numbers-crunching, from early recording-keeping (death and census data) to Alan Turing’s use of mechanized reasoning to break secret World War II codes to our present widespread use of big data in business, science, politics, and other realms. “Basically any interaction between man and machine, or machine and machine, these days is being logged,” one researcher told her. The author confesses her appreciation of big data’s benefits—its ability, for example, to trace links between behavior, environment, and health outcomes—but also her wariness of its growing intrusiveness. “Our most personal information, our private exchanges, our network of friends, are used by others without our consent,” she writes. Since the invention of the filing cabinet, governments have tried to run society by watching data, warned a privacy advocate: “If only we had more data we could control things better!” Harkness’ style is light and conversational, but she makes clear her serious concerns about a society in which it is now possible to predict the likelihood of a person’s future involvement in homicide or other serious crime based on the police records of friends and acquaintances. “I’m not a data point, I am a human being,” she writes. “And so are you.”
A readable guide for the non–IT set.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4729-2005-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bloomsbury Sigma
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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