Data Extractions and Extractors

In this chapter, I discuss practices and technologies used to extract data from what (McAfee & Brynjolfsson, Harvard Business Review 90:61–67, 2012), in their seminal paper on big dataBig data, call “walking data generators.” I focus on data extractionsData extraction (namely, practices that focus on maximizing the collection, storage, and processing of so-called “big dataBig data”) and data extractorsData extractors (the technologies used to perform such tasks (extractions)).