The Danger of a Big Data Episteme and the Need to Evolve GIS

The emergence of " Big Data " as a dominant technology meme challenges Geography's technical underpinnings, found in GIS, while engaging the discipline in a conversation about the meme's impact on society. This allows scholars to engage collaboratively from both a computationally quantitative and critically qualitative perspective. For Geography there is an opportunity to point out these shortcomings through critical appraisals of " Big Data " and its reflection of society. Complimentarily this opens the door to developing methodologies that will allow for a more realistic interpretation of " Big Data " analysis in the context of an unfiltered societal view. Big Data as a Meme " Big Data " is a popular technological meme that has become pervasive in the language discussing a variety of computing challenges and trends. The term " Big Data " has several characteristics often associated with popular technology memes: 1) The component words " big " and " data " are both broad and general 2) The term is open to multiple interpretations 3) The words can easily be composited with other terms to further spread the meme – Big Science, Big Complexity, Big Privacy " Big Data " is similar in trajectory to " open source " and " web 2.0 " memes that lead to a plethora of " open " prefixes and " 2.0 " suffixes. While the semantics of the creation and use of the term " Big Data " is a fascinating road to walk, this position paper will focus more on the methodological than the critical issues of the meme. Specifically, the paper will examine the role of geography in " Big Data " through the challenges it creates for computation, methodology, and interpretation. Further, it will explore the impact of " Big Data " on the discipline of Geography as seen through the lens of GIS. It should be kept in mind that the impacts of " Big Data " go beyond just quantitative approaches. They may also impact qualitative research as seen through the emerging works in " digital humanities ". While it's difficult to pin down a general definition of " Big Data " it is useful to have a starting point for understanding the role of Geography today and in the future. The short definition of " Big Data " is that it encompasses " a collection of data sets so large and complex …