As the Obama Administration’s new “Big Data Research and Development Initiative” has made clear, the “big data” era is officially upon us. The term – “big data” has been used in multiple ways, but most generally refers to the avalanche of “raw data” generated by the internet and other new kinds of data-capturing sensor and digital technologies. Or, as one big data guru more pithily put it, it is “all the stuff we do online” – and more.…
Tag: Ethnography
Ethnography, Tanzania, PhD degrees, and Something to Read at Bedtime
Someone told me once that a PhD is a license to write for other PhDs. As Donna Lanclos notes, this is different than making a living, and getting a full-time tenure-track job. Nevertheless, as Donna herself demonstrated with her own book about childhood in Northern Ireland, this is a license that we can actually on occasion use.
But, while a PhD may be a license to write, what is really fun is getting people to read what you wrote.…