If we know how people think and act, and can prove with the amount of data we can now collect, we have crossed into a new age of our existence.

"Water" is the simplest kind of word to learn how to use, a concrete noun. So it's not surprising that such words are normally the first a child learns. But more intriguing -- and much less studied -- is the question of how we learn other kinds of words.

Professor Deb Roy's study is a great example of how large-scale databases can answer important questions beyond those obtainable from standard experiments.

An opportunity still exists to further explore this treasure trove of information, and mining this information will reveal the birth of healthy social emotional development, which many would argue is even more formative and foundational than language.

What does it mean when your role as a parent and as a professional overlap? How effective can you be as a scientist when your primary subjects are your family? And how effective can you be as a parent when your child is, at least in part, a means to an outcome?

We have lost faith in the fact that children genuinely want to learn. It is only when we make it stressful or unsafe that this drive is thwarted. Fortunately, babies are shielded from the pressures of our judgments or arbitrary deadlines.

Big and open data is not just about tracking consumer habits and improving organizational effectiveness. Though certainly these things are important, we cannot miss the opportunity to harness this movement to move the needle on social problems that have long seemed intractable.

Do you know what is essential for a good memory? The ability to forget. To completely and thoroughly forget. Forgetting, like breathing or sleeping, is physiologically normal.

While opponents to big data have their reasons for doubting the merits of using large sets of data, proponents point to all the ways big data is helping to improve society. Some even predict social innovation may be the next frontier of big data.