Big Data Drive: The Rhetoric of Biometric Big Data

In this essay, we seek to develop a concept of “big data drive.” Influenced in part by Lacan’s theory of drive, we study the drive toward biometric big data. Biometric big data (BBD) refers to the data collected around facial recognition, eye recognition, thumb prints, and other types of technology whose task is to identify a specific being through unique bio characteristics. “Big Data Drive” refers to the energies that pulsate around Big Data, as both a signifier and fetishized object, to promise “something more” that may never be fulfilled.