"Chronische Zerstreuung"

Wir browsen, bloggen, chatten, googeln, simsen, twittern, zatooen wie die Gehetzten.

Wir haben einen Überfluss an Informationen, aber einen Schwund an Aufmerksamkeit. Die neue Zivilisationskrankheit heisst “chronische Zerstreuung”.

Mehr dazu im Text von Eduard Kaeser in der NZZ am Sonntag. Der Text ist ein Teil der Essaysammlung “Pop Science. Essays zur Wissenschaftskultur”, welche im Oktober 2009 erscheint.

Themenschwerpunkt "Big Data" bei Nature News

Nature News hat passend zum Start des Large Hadron Colliders ein Special über Big Data veröffentlicht.

Enthalten unter anderem:
The next Google

Ten years ago this month, Google’s first employee turned up at the garage where the search engine was originally housed. What technology at a similar early stage today will have changed our world as much by 2018? Nature asked some researchers and business people to speculate — or lay out their wares. Their responses are wide ranging, but one common theme emerges: the integration of the worlds of matter and information, whether it be by the blurring of boundaries between online and real environments, touchy-feely feedback from a phone or chromosomes tucked away on databases.

Data wrangling

Collecting and releasing environmental data have stirred up controversy in Washington, says David Goldston, and will continue to do so.

Welcome to the petacentre

What does it take to store bytes by the tens of thousands of trillions? Cory Doctorow meets the people and machines for which it’s all in a day’s work.

Wikiomics

Pioneering biologists are trying to use wiki-type web pages to manage and interpret data, reports Mitch Waldrop. But will the wider research community go along with the experiment?

How do your data grow?

Scientists need to ensure that their results will be managed for the long haul. Maintaining data takes big organization, says Clifford Lynch.