From the Introduction:

Ever-rising floods of data are being generated by mobile networking, cloud computing and other new technologies. At the same time, continued innovations use advanced correlation techniques to analyze them, and the process and payoff can be both encouraging and alarming. The Promise and Peril of Big Data explores the ways these inferential technologies can positively affect medicine, business and government, and also examines the social perils they pose. Written by conference rapporteur David Bollier, the report summarizes the insights of the Eighteenth Annual Roundtable on Information Technology, which sought to understand the implications of the emergence of  “Big Data” and new techniques of inferential analysis.