Apache: Big Data 2015

I examine the ethics of Big Data in several ongoing projects and the possibilities of engaging subject communities in the processes and projects. As background: The ethics of data, especially "Big Data," can be considered as the linked ethics of gathering the data and then interpreting it. Big Data--the data and interpretation dyad--complicates this otherwise dull as dishwater process in part by obscuring acquisition and reading it as discovery, and in part by abstracting the particular elements making up the data even as those may refer to persons and their doings. That is: Were an experiment conducted on any population, the persons objectified would likely have to sign their consent. This talk looks to ways to engage (and so form) communities as subjects and not just objects of Big Data projects. Apache's important projects are key here.