The Pew Foundation's Internet and American Life Project has just released a report on the future of big data; as with a number of other reports in their "Future of the Internet" series done in collaboration with the Elon University "Imagining the Internet" project, it's a compilation of comments on some specific questions by a wide variety of people that are collected together with some synthesis. These can be quite helpful in getting a sense of the range of (often quite informed) opinion on the issues.

The announcement and pointers to the report both online and in downloadable PDF are at:

http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Future-of-Big-Data.aspx

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI