“Big Data,” a descriptive term of relatively recent origin, has as one of its key effects the radically increased harnessing of ever-more-personal information accrued in the course of pedestrian life. This essay takes a historical view of the amassing and sharing of personal data, examining the genealogy of the “personal” and psychological elements inherent in Big Data through the case of an American Indian man who (the reigning experts claimed) gained the status of the most documented single individual in the history of modern anthropology. Although raised a traditional Hopi Indian in Oraibi, Arizona, Don Talayesva (1890–1985) gave over his life materials to scientists at prominent universities and constituted in and of himself a “vast data set” long before such practices were common. This essay uses this pioneering data set (partially preserved in the Human Relations Area Files and its web-based full-text database, eHRAF) to examine the distinctiveness of Big Data in relation to the personal, psychological realm; finally, a comparison is made with twenty-first-century data-collection practices of quantifying the self.

中文翻译：

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人类学记录最多的人，约 1947 年：大社会科学时代大数据的预兆

“大数据”是一个相对较新的描述性术语，其主要影响之一是对行人生活过程中积累的更多个人信息的利用急剧增加。本文从历史角度审视个人数据的积累和共享，通过一名美国印第安人（当时的专家声称）获得大数据地位的案例，检验了大数据中固有的“个人”和心理因素的谱系。现代人类学史上记录最多的单身人士。唐·塔拉耶斯瓦 (Don Talayesva，1890-1985 年) 虽然在亚利桑那州的奥莱比 (Oraibi) 养育了一个传统的霍皮族印第安人，但他将自己的生活资料交给了著名大学的科学家，并且早在这种做法普遍存在之前，他就自己构建了一个“庞大的数据集”。本文使用这个开创性的数据集（部分保存在人际关系领域文件及其基于网络的全文数据库 eHRAF）来检验大数据在个人心理领域的独特性；最后，与 21 世纪量化自我的数据收集实践进行了比较。