The TED talks that we were assigned to watch taught me a lot about big data that I didn’t know. Cukier talked about how big data has transitioned society to collect data on a global scale. He also discussed how data is transferred at the speed of light. It’s crazy to think that data can be collected and shared so quickly. It was also interesting to hear some of the potential benefits to big data such as helping with car safety to avoid crashes due to someone falling asleep behind the wheel. Golbeck discussed the girl who was pregnant, but hadn’t told her parents yet. Target sent her adds for baby products based on a pre-natal vitamin purchase she had made. It’s crazy that Target knew she was pregnant before her own parents. Some downsides to big data discussed were that it quite possibly will take over jobs if we don’t implement the technology correctly. Some questions that I had were could big data ever hit a capacity where it stops collecting data? If every person is contributing to the data pool, you would think that it would cap out at some point. Also, would people ever have the opportunity to chose to protect their data so that companies couldn’t use it/find it? I think the idea of big data is very interesting and will be beneficial, but as Cukier pointed out, we need to use it right so that it doesn’t consume our world.