Big data is suddenly everywhere. From scarcity and difficulty to find data (and information), we now have a deluge of data. In recent years, the amount of available data has been growing in an exponential pace. This is in turn made possible due to the immense growth in number of devices recording data, as well as the connectivity between all these devices through the internet of things. Everyone seems to be collecting, analyzing, making money from and celebrating (or fearing) the powers of Big data. By combining the power of modern computing, it promises to solve virtually any problem - just by crunching the numbers.

Big data is suddenly everywhere. From scarcity and difficulty to find data (and information), we now have a deluge of data. In recent years, the amount of available data has been growing at an exponential pace. This is in turn made possible due to the immense growth in number of devices recording data, as well as the connectivity between all these devices through the internet of things. Everyone seems to be collecting, analyzing, making money from and celebrating (or fearing) the powers of Big data.

Here I am, a human, writing a story assigned to a machine. If I'd published what the computer came up with, you'd be reading something like: "content that was that communications and everything that makes on a person what they're are also to be in the Internet in the fact about it is that models are technologication of the same that its also from the most computer." A machine really did come up with that garbage. But let me back up for a second. A little over a year ago, I started asking around--among computer scientists at universities and tech companies, mostly--to see if someone would help me design and carry out a weird little experiment I had in mind.