Bigger Than You, Big Data and Obesity

Author

Behar

Year

2016

Publisher

Punctum Books

Language

English

Pages

Link

Last Update

16-Jul-2026

Keywords

Philosophy

Description

This quote from Spinoza seems an unlikely launching pad for a discussion of the new intimacies arising between humans’ bigness and big data. Yet, by considering human activities through the elegant, elemental figures of geometry, we shall see how Spinoza gets us straight into the thick thicknesses of things.

Big data refers to the massive quantity of records that are captured, amassed, and mined in the wake of digitally structured actions. It is the sum total of records of actions—the exponential archive of every component transaction captured in every data trail. These actions may originate from human or nonhuman...