What is Knowledge in the Age of Big Data? | Timandra Harkness | TEDxSquareMile

In the internet age, all human knowledge is only three clicks away - can that be true? Is knowledge no more than information, or data? What does it mean to know something, or somebody? Can a machine know you better than you know yourself? The reduction of human knowledge, expertise, experience and understanding to stores of data is a fundamental and dangerous mistake. Meaning, reasoning and understanding are not commodities but verbs. To fully benefit from the proliferation of information in the Big Data age, we must restore the human mind to the act of knowing. Timandra presents the BBC Radio 4 series, FutureProofing; and documentaries including Data, Data Everywhere, Personality Politics & The Singularity. She is resident reporter on Radio 4’s social psychology series The Human Zoo, where she is more an exhibit than a zookeeper. She is Visiting Fellow (Knowledge Exchange) in Big Data, Information Rights and Public Engagement with the Centre for Information Rights at the University of Winchester. Her book, Big Data: does size matter? was published by Bloomsbury in 2016. At TEDx Square Mile, Timandra will explore knowledge in the age of Big Data, looking at what it means to know something, beyond the data stored and accessed via machines. She will discuss meaning, reasoning and understanding as verbs, not commodities, and look at what’s needed for us to restore the human mind to the act of knowing, to fully benefit from today’s cornucopia of information. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx