"Smart cities" utilize sensors and traffic cameras to optimize energy use and improve public service delivery in real time. Risks and Ethical Challenges

Google demonstrated big data's power by analyzing search terms for "flu" or "cough medicine" to predict the spread of H1N1 faster than official government statistics.

Despite the benefits, Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier warn of a "dark side":

Traditional statistics rely on small samples to represent a whole. Big data allows us to analyze nearly every data point in a set, which eliminates sampling errors and lets us "zoom in" on small subgroups without losing reliability.