Every time there's a new tool, whether it's Internet or cell phones or anything else, all these things can be used for good or evil. Technology is neutral; it depends on how it's used.
You can't talk about big data without talking about things like privacy and ownership.
How do you photograph data?
Those who fear that we are losing our individualism couldn't be more wrong: Americans have never been more free to create and recreate themselves.
I think people love this idea of leaving a message for the future. I was always fascinated by the idea of time capsules.
The ability to collect, analyze, triangulate and visualize vast amounts of data in real time is something the human race has never had before. This new set of tools, often referred by the lofty term 'Big Data,' has begun to emerge as a new approach to addressing some of the biggest challenges facing our planet.
My father said, 'You should do 'A Day in the Life of Medicine.' A book about how the human race wants to heal itself in new ways.
'Data exhaust' is probably my least favorite phrase in the big data world 'cause it sounds like something you're trying to get rid of or something noxious that comes out of the back of your car.
A tiny apartment might hold three generations of an immigrant family.
Some people think that Facebook is fantastic; other people are very worried about it.
Photographers have always been each other's biggest fans.
Do you realize the FBI filing system from the '50s was much more secure? How could you have stolen that data? It was on notecards. Now someone with a thumb drive, or remotely, can take the equivalent of millions of those notecards.
The people who are thinking most about big data right now are corporations and governments.
I think that we have to have the ability to decide what we share and what we don't.
Targeted ads, I think, are useful because I don't want to see all the crap. I'm not interested in buying a Mercedes Benz, but I am interested in buying a new MacBook Air. So if organizations like Facebook can actually make the ads more relevant to me, if they know what I am interested in, I have no problem with that.
The 'America at Home' project was aimed at being the most extensive record of American home life ever attempted, and we were amazed at how many people were willing to participate as photographers or to welcome the photographers into their homes.
I'm not a computer person at all. I only know how to turn them on. I'm not a programmer. I couldn't program my way out of a paper bag.
I was voted least likely to manage a business when I was at Dickinson College.
Americans are changing right before our eyes. They are choosing different lifestyles, families, traditions and ways of living.
I wonder if 50 years from now we'll look back, and maybe Julian Assange will be the hero and J. Edgar Hoover will be the enemy of the state.
