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all the data in the world has been generated
in the last two years. This includes digitized
versions of traditional print media, as well as all
the output of our interactions via social media:
tweets, uploaded pictures and video, e-mail,
instant messages, etc. Data becomes “big”
when its scale is so large it can’t be grasped,
managed and manipulated by traditional
statistical software, and the scale of the
information we are generating now is mindblowing:
by 2012, people were creating 2.8
zettabytes of data a year, and this is projected
to double by 2015 (“zetta” is 2 to the 70th
power). But what’s really impressive are the
tools we are developing to make sense of all
these bytes.
While the human race is rapidly
depleting or degrading natural resources—oil,
water, minerals, biodiversity—one resource
is growing at an exponential pace. Every two
days people create as much information as
we did from the dawn of civilization up
until 2003. Put another way, 90 percent of
Sci-fi author Sir Arthur C. Clarke coined three
laws of prediction, the third of which is “Any
sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic.” Big data analytics
definitely launches us into that magical realm.
While some of the current applications merely
increase efficiencies of traditional business
(reducing fuel use, for example), they can
open up whole new vistas. Predictive marketing
enables stores to process the vast amount
of personal data they collect on customers to
identify what they might buy, and when, with
pinpoint accuracy. (Target famously outraged
one father by sending coupons for baby
products to his teenage daughter, only to have
the abashed dad find out “there’s been some
activities in my house I haven’t been completely
aware of.”) Analysts are becoming ever more
savvy at reading the digital footprints we leave
via social media, parsing our Facebook posts
or mining our tweets to predict our basic personality
traits, values and needs.
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