27 February 2010
- Information has gone from scarce to superabundant.
- Decoding the human genome involves analyzing three billion base pairs--which took ten years the first time it was done in 2003, but now it can be done in a week.
- Big Data is the new term for the phenomenon.
- Data and information are hard to tell apart
- Given enough raw data, today's algorithms can reveal new insights that would have once remained hidden
- Revolutions in science have often been preceded by revolutions in measurement - microscope to electron microscope, for example.
- Craig Mundie (head of research and strategy at Microsoft) - Economies can form around the data; data is becoming the new raw materials for businesses
- Mundie and Eric Schmidt (boss of Google) sit on a Presidential task force to reform health care - "If you really want to reform health care, you build a sort of health care economy around the data that relate to people".; data becomes a central asset in trying to figure out how you would improve every aspect of health care.
A Different Game - Information is transforming traditional businesses
- Companies are collecting more data than ever before; these systems are being linked and data-mining techniques give a complete picture of their operations; described as a single version of the truth that allows firms to pick out trends and improve forecasting.
- Cablecom (a Swiss telecom company) - its software spotted that defections to other plans peaked in the 13th month, the decision to leave was made around the 9th month based on number of customer service calls, so the company offered deals at the 7th month which cut down defections to only 5%.
- Business decisions will be made on algorithms rather than hunches.
- Two trends are helping to fuel these new uses of data. 1) Cloud computing uses the internet to collect, store, and process data--companies can lease these computing powers as needed instead of buying expensive equipment 2) Open Source software allows companies to share information more easily.
Clicking for Gold
- Companies are compiling masses of data on people, their activities, their likes and dislikes, their relationships with others and even where they are -- and they are keeping the data private.
- Every eBay product category is treated as a micro-economy that is actively managed; lots of searches for an item without a lot of sales can mean lack of inventory so they can adjust accordingly.
- Making improvements based on big data sets have been done in the past like ancient ships comparing their route maps.
- Spell Check and Translation programs are done by cross checking with all of the available data.
- Google organizes the world's information; they aren't necessarily interested in owning it; they just want access to this information without sharing it with their rivals.
New Rules for Big Data
- Privacy - The tension between individuals' interest in protecting their privacy and companies' interest in exploiting personal information could be resolved by giving people more control.
- Processing Data - racial discrimination for a bank loan is illegal. But when a computer looks at educational level of the loan applicant's mother as a judge for approving a loan is indirectly racist, as education levels for women is often a racial issue in America.
- Privacy rules lean towards treating personal information as a property right. The trail of data that an individual leaves behind and that can be traced to him, from clicks on search engines to book buying preferences belongs to the individual, not the entity that collected it.
TS Eliot - Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
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