Big Data: A Trending, Stealth Topic in Science, Technology, and Religion (A Somewhat Revised Musing)

This comes from my Top Eleven List of Key Topics in Science, Technology, and Religion adapted from my book Negotiating Science and Religion in America. In it, I look forward to topics I hope to address in future posts, which is an appropriate way to begin a new year. 

I move now to #7.

Big Data 

I don’t see much religious writing or speaking in the popular press or in academic circles on this stealth topic. Big Data is (via a reasonably garden variety definition) 

“data sets, typically consisting of billions or trillions of records, that are so vast and complex that they require new and powerful computational resources to process.” 

This new reality bequeathed to us by the power of computing has profound religious significance. Maybe because Big Data is all around and seems powerful, many technologists associate it with the divine.

On a related note, some seem to promote Big Data as the scientific cutting edge with almost religious zeal. Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, commented, 

“Data is the new science. Big Data holds the answers.” Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware

That sounds like a fairly grandiose, even religious, claim. Since this is such a new topic (at least to me), I’ll simply lay out three sets of questions: 1) How do we as human beings conceive of the sheer volume of information? What tools do we possess? 2) What should we do with this information? Who owns each person’s data—the individual or powerful, multinational corporations? This is an especially tricky ethical question with healthcare. 3) How does the Eye of Big Data relate to the omnipresence of our God? Is it benevolent? Does this give us comfort, concern, or some mixture of both?