The U.S. Department of Commerce is like your older sister – she’s been around forever but still isn’t very interesting.  It was one of the original cabinet offices in the Executive Branch, reporting directly to the President, with the mission of representing the interests of business.  (In fact, long before the IRS existed, Commerce was the original revenue-raiser by collecting customs taxes.)

It is responsible for the Census, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Patent Office, and so on.  But, that is not news.

I attended a lecture by Penny Pritzker, the current Secretary of the Department of Commerce and realized their mission has grown to become the primary producer of data – big data.  They produce enough data to fill up the Library of Congress – five times – every day.  The mind boggles!  They have now entered into partnership arrangements with other users of big data, such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc., to collate all that data and make it useful to business.

Frankly, I found all this to be creepy – reminding me of the self-aware, cloud-based artificial intelligence called “Sky-net” in the Terminator movies.  Why does all this data need to be collated anyway?  Is this a proper role of government, to help big aggregators of data?  This is not about national security or anti-terrorism.  Of course, it is all about advertising!

Maybe, your older sister is only dull and boring . . . when she is not terrifying?