Big Data published in the public era: an important topic

Shiji's novel "Big Data", has been completed, is a 300-page masterpiece. Recently he sent me the proofs of the book and asked me to make a preamble. Unfortunately, I am going to travel, and he is in a hurry, I can only after browsing, Fashi some of my feelings. As for chewing and digesting this interesting piece of work, it has to be two months from now to catch up with the publication of the film. I have stated in advance that these are just some of the impressions I have had after browsing his masterpiece, the very immediate intuition, and the momentary insight.

The content of this book emphasizes that today is a time when a large amount of data is open to the public. Since the information revolution, information tools, hardware, software, parallel development, with the times. Data in our lives, daily contact, is a phenomenon that is visible everywhere. Collection of data, of course, rely on the rapid classification of computers and records, but more importantly, the progress of the search engine, and network communication between the Internet. Today, a network, not only can be concatenated together, communicate with each other, and the "Cloud (Cloud)" design, can be each area of individual data, stored into a large database, help us to more quickly and widely search.

In the last one-fourth years of the 20th century, new things have been accelerating, and the pace of progress in 21st century is overwhelming and ubiquitous. Shiji in this book emphasizes: not only data management and a large number of existence, and, in modern countries, open society and Government, through the data, each other at a glance, without concealment. The government that holds public power, like any other government, has the enormous power to overwhelm the community because they have a lot of data to hold in their hands. However, such data can also be obtained by citizens alike, so that the government can do something that could be spread out in the world and let us examine it. In the past feudal autocracy and totalitarian regimes, their rulers can oppress the common people, and the people do not have the means to counter the oppression of public power. Shiji, in particular, has made it an opportunity to make the data public by trying to keep the data open to the public after his successor.

Shiji quotes Mr. Hu and Mr. Renyu. Hu said that Chinese people are accustomed to "almost" Sir, everything is so-so and not accurate. Renyu that China does not know how to manage the country with numbers. Shiji quotes These two gentlemen, of course, to highlight the great differences between traditional China and the United States today. But I must say: Hu and Renyu's words, are "love deep and responsible for the cut" mentality, they were in China's chaos, provoked by this speech.

Historically, no country, China or the west, has developed into a complex civil service system, and there is no rule of law without data. Statistics of population, resources, land and property, in Chinese history, since the Warring States Period formed the State system of the nations, no dynasty does not have a certain database; But today's standards, rough and fine, ancient and modern there are many differences. In the Han Dynasty, for example, the household statistics shown by the Han, the population of each household, the male and female youngest, as well as the number of assets of the word, are detailed statistics, and whether it is in Yanbian, or Jingzhou county, the format is consistent. Compared with the records of the western regions of the Tang Dynasty, the content format of the various household statistics is quite consistent. This basic data, in the list of the canon, see it. Of course, the data of each dynasty have done well and have done poorly. Roughly speaking, http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/31965.html "> Minority in the dynasty established in the central Plains, the armed forces to establish political power, but also often rely on the looting of violence, to obtain the resources they need." A dynasty in orbit, the data is quite complete.

Look at Western history again. The Greek era, we do not know enough information. In the Roman Empire, the entire empire contained different political units, and there was no unification civilian government, so the national database did not seem to exist. When the medieval dark period, the country is not a country, the place is only the size of feudal lords occupy territory, they did not establish a detailed database. Since modern times, the nations have formed a complete sovereign state, and these data have emerged.

This is in the history of the power to grasp the figures. A large enterprise, for example, the Qing Dynasty of China's ticket, if they do not have a complex database, can not carry out exchange, loans, deposits and other activities. The British East India Company, holding a wealth of resources, can not but have a fairly complete database, otherwise not to operate such a complex development business.

In today's data age, I've mentioned earlier that not only do corporate units have the ability to collect data, but more importantly, there are search engines that can quickly retrieve information from them, and help to understand the situation. For example, we have only recently seen data showing that 1% of the population of the United States has more than 40% of the nation's wealth and 99% of its population. For many people who have long been accustomed to the United States as an open society, this set of data shows that the phenomenon can almost be said to be the disillusionment of the ideal, so that we must review: is the United States really so open? Or is it relatively slowly closing? is wealth and power gradually concentrated in the hands of a handful of people at the top of society? Their wealth as a magician's baton, arranged our lives, decided our future.

Shiji This book clearly describes the impact of the information age on our lives and the control of society. The scope of his discussion is very broad. I look forward to this book as the beginning, there are a lot of information tools have research, also have the experience of people, participate in the discussion, let us know more clearly, this 21st century is sitting in the long new knowledge tools. To this end, we would like to pay tribute and thanks to Shiji, for he has put forward an important topic for the Chinese language world.