A data trove about 'everything'

New York

YOUR phone, in all likelihood, knows more about you than your doctor. Your credit card company knows your likes and dislikes better than your closest friend. Google knows your thoughts, and even completes your sentences. Your telephone service provider knows where you are at all times. Facebook, for many, knows more than the rest combined.

But Paul W Glimcher, a neuro-economist at New York University, looks at all that data and sees a "train wreck." For all of Silicon Valley's cheerleading of "big data," Mr Glimcher said it had yet to be used to effectively solve some of society's most vexing problems.

So he was intrigued when Miyoung Chun, the executive vice-president for science programmes at the Kavli Foundation and a leader of the Obama administration's Brain Initiati…