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Tag: <span>wired</span>

The problem with Utopian big data theories and why there is no magical data fairy pregnant with the truth

Big data will save us all. Or so some technical pundits reckon. Before I go into that a brief excursion into history is required. In 1979 there was an accident at a Three Mile Island nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania. The engineers had unwittingly let some water leak into the wrong system which triggered a shutdown of the main pumps responsible for cooling the plant. Sadly, the pipes feeding the backup pumps were incorrectly shut after maintenance. Normally the techs would have been warned, but the warning light on the control panel was hidden by a paper tag. The situation quickly …