Why Big Data Is Like Porn

It isn't terribly easy to define, much like a few other subjects.

members-only post Oct 03, 2012 2-min read

"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." [Emphasis added.]

—Justice Potter Stewart, concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio 378 U.S. 184 (1964), regarding possible obscenity in The Lovers.

What Big Data Is Not

The above quote comes from perhaps the most famous of all U.S. Supreme Court cases. The line "I'll know it when I see it" has stood the test of time. What's more, those seven words illustrate a number of things, not the least of which is the difficulty that even really smart people have in defining ostensibly simple terms.

Fast forward 48 years and many learned folks are having the same issue with respect to Big Data. Just what the heck is it, anyway?

Much like the term cloud computing, you can search in vain for days for "the right" definition of Big Data. I'd argue that such a definition doesn't exist. Who can say with absolute certainty that one definition of the term is objectively better than another?

Much like obscenity or pornography, perhaps Big Data is actually best defined against its inverse. In that vein, I love this definition from The Register:

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