In our last article we discussed the fact that automation and algorithms are created by humans, and so, therefore, can be biased. For our final article on the subject of automation and where it's taking us, we want to examine the human's role in the automated society, and how important it is for us to fully understand it. The Industrial Revolution brought machines to common use in the world. Where you might have had 50 people engaged in a certain task, those 50 people were then replaced by 1 machine. When all was said and done, though, you still had a human being controlling what the machine was doing.

Let me use this space to discuss about some of the main topics of my PhD thesis: "Big Data, Cognitive Extension, Self-organizing Processes and Economic Development". My research was born as an effort to improve my comprehension of the emerging phenomenon "Big Data" and its potential impacts on the Economy, in particular Economic Development and fight against poverty. Big Data include in the first place data generated by billions of people in a decentralized way through the Social Media. Another important aspect of Big Data is the evolution of the services and business processes due to the Digital Transformation, and last, but not least, we should also consider the growing data flow originated by the Internet of Things. The first question was targeted to exploring to what extent the current economic theories could be used as a basis for analyzing this new disruptive phenomenon, especially since many experts in the new age of Big Data are skeptical about possibility of fitting it within the existing theoretical framework due to some features that come with this phenomenon, such as: free services, shared ownership, network creativity, serendipity in social networks, hybrid decision systems, etc. Due to the complex nature of the problem, the thesis is divided into two parts. The first part explores how the phenomenon of Big Data may fit within Economic Theory.

Let me use this space to discuss about some of the main topics of my PhD thesis: "Big Data, Cognitive Extension, Self-organizing Processes and Economic Development". My research was born as an effort to improve my comprehension of the emerging phenomenon "Big Data" and its potential impacts on the Economy, in particular Economic Development and fight against poverty. The first part explores how the phenomenon of Big Data may fit within Economic Theory. A new analytical framework is defined that will allow to link Big Data, human's cognitive extension, self-organizing processes and Economic Development.