Big Data launches "fast track" in China to usher in a new era

"Big data is now a huge thing." Recently, the U.S. government released a new version of the Big Data Research program, White House Director of Science and Technology Policy Office Holdren said he had predicted 2012 big data will be a "big deal", now look conservative.

Time to go back to June, Snowden 41 slides, let the big U.S. Data monitoring project "Prism" surface, chilling.

2013 by some experts called "Big data year." The optimism and anxiety of the big data age are fully demonstrated during the year.

Big change

IDC (International Data Company) estimates that the global 2012 total data generated about 2.8 kilobytes. Some people calculate, this is equivalent to 3000多亿部 2 hours of high-definition movies, in a row to see more than 70 million years can not see the end.

And that's just the overture. The bigger wave is behind.

IDC predicts that over the next few years, global data volumes will double every two years, reaching 40 kilobytes in 2020.

Large data is an important driver of this great change and will be a key resource for promoting economic and social transformation. Collecting, analyzing and applying the huge data of exponential growth will give birth to innovation, provide new development opportunities for all walks of life and bring about changes in people's daily lives.

Starbucks ' Big Data coffee mug is a small example. U.S. media reported that the coffee chain giant is going to experiment in some coffee cups loaded with sensors, collecting regular customers to drink coffee speed and other data, so as to drink more slowly to coffee consumers to provide a good insulation cup, improve their satisfaction and loyalty.

Industry insiders believe that the nature of large data is not "big", but with a new thinking and technology to analyze massive data, revealing the hidden human behavior and other patterns, thereby creating new products and services, or predicting future trends.

Large data is a new value and methodology, people are not faced with random samples but the whole data, not precision but mixed, not causal relationship, but related. "Existing perceptions and systems are the fruits of scarce data, and the way people think and work must change to accommodate the arrival of the big data age." Schoenberg wrote in his book.

Large competition

Large data is seen as the next frontier for innovation and productivity promotion, and is becoming one of the elements of national competitiveness, and is increasingly being valued worldwide. Many Governments have increased their support for large data development, even to the height of national strategies. International competition for big data continued to be overweight in 2013.

A consultancy study by the Ipsos group showed that global investment in large data projects amounted to € 4.5 billion (about $6 billion trillion) in 2012, with an estimated 2013 to 20,142 annual growth rate of about 40%.

In the United States, big data has been transformed from hot words into key projects. March 2012, the United States government has released the 200 million dollar large data research and development plan, in November 2013 again, involving various levels of government, private enterprises, research institutions, a number of large data research projects. The National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and so on, have been commented on as the U.S. Big Data Strategy version 2.0.

In Britain, the government still extravagantly big data, despite the economic downturn and fiscal tightening. In early 2013, the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills announced that it would inject 800 million pounds into the development of 8 categories of High-tech, including 189 million pounds (about $300 million) for large data projects.

Big data in China have also started to enter the "fast track", the government, enterprises and research institutes are in multi-directional layout. Ministry of the Internet "Twelve-Five" development planning, information processing technology as one of the four key innovative technology projects, including mass data storage, data mining and so on. With the release of 4g licences at the end of 2013, higher-speed networks will bring greater data flow and strategic resources for governments and businesses.

Big challenge

"Prism" 2013 exposure, let people see the big data age to maintain national information security, protection of personal privacy of the serious challenges faced. The prism Gate has made governments aware of the importance of "data sovereignty" and the consequences of relying on individual countries for the core technologies of networks and telecommunications. The need to accelerate independent innovation to protect "data sovereignty" has become a consensus among some countries.

The study, published in March 2013 by the British Journal, found that as long as there were 4 points of time and location, a person's identity could be identified with an accuracy rate of 95%. This suggests that large data is enough to "portray" a person clearly, and that existing legal and core technologies are increasingly ineffective in protecting individual privacy.

How to stay sober and rational, creative and creative in the big data hits the same test for both the state and the individual.

Experts point out that large data is expected to play an important role in China's economic restructuring and upgrading, a huge population base, the size of the economy and demand, means that China's development of large data has a unique advantage. But it should also be seen that large data has low value density characteristics, mining, analysis and other technical requirements. China can not only be satisfied with the "World Data Center", should prevent the concept of speculation, strengthen independent innovation, forward-looking system design and other layout, homeopathy, the "Chinese creation" from the opportunity into reality.

We should also be wary of the tendency of "superstitious" large data, and recognize the potential flaws and deficiencies of large data analysis. Psychologists believe that the model of large data creation will bind people to the options provided by the algorithm, and too much reliance on large data analysis may constrain innovation. American internet activist Parize called "Internet Filter": Although the Internet personalization brings convenience, it will confine people to the "bubble" of their past behavior patterns, unable to touch the vast amount of information brought by the lack of as much as possible.

Big data experts like to use Shakespeare "all the past, all Prelude" to describe the inevitability of large data analysis, but the big data provided is only a reference to the answer rather than the final answer. Both in the small data age and in the big data age, exploration and innovation should not be abandoned, as Lincoln said, "The best way to predict the future is to create the future."