I didn t set out to become a collector of your and your neighbors information. When I was growing up, nobody but egghead scientists talked about data. It was the mechanical age, and I was a gadget geek, taking apart my cousin s toys and trying to put them back together again. I was especially crazy about cars and engines, and had it not been for a fateful encounter during college recruiting season, I might ve lived my life as a race car mechanic instead of learning about computers at IBM. As it turned out, pursuing Big Data allowed me the resources to become a professional race car driver on...