How big data gets so big

This year is a big data crossover year: As a concept, as a term, and as a marketing tool. Large numbers have sprung up, breaking the limits of the scientific and technological community and becoming the mainstream. First, on big data, here are a few things to emphasize: Big Data is a featured theme at the 9374.html "> World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this year", the report titled Big Data, Big impact. In March this year, the U.S. federal government announced a 200 million dollar investment to launch a "Big Data research and development program".

Ricksmorland, creator of the "Day Life" photography series, has a new project called "Human face Big Data". The New York Times also uses this name, which is titled "Big Data Age" and "Data University". The sign that the big Data era has come to the mark is the advent of last month's satirical comic book "Adams". A column guide said: "It is everywhere, it knows everything." Its name is called large data. ”

The story of big data is like a MIHM decision. It has two important components. The first is that the word itself is not too much technical content, but it is catchy, vaguely memorable. The second is that there is a huge potential for technological development and some technical pitfalls behind this vocabulary.

Large data is a shorthand label, usually refers to the use of artificial intelligence, such as machine learning, in a large number of data capture standard database. New data sources include web browsing data, social network communications, sensor data and monitoring data.

The combination of massive data and software algorithms opens the door to new business opportunities. Big data companies like Google and Facebook, for example. Last year, Watson (AI program) from IBM defeated humans in the TV quiz show "jeopardy!" Victory is a triumph of large data calculations. In theory, large data can improve decisions from business to medicine, allowing decisions to be made based on data and analysis rather than intuition and experience.

The word itself is vague, but it is becoming more and more authentic. "says Joen Kleinberg, a computer scientist at Cornell University. "Big data is a process, a slogan, it's possible to change everything." ”

The continued rise in data volumes has long been a challenge. From the late 19th century, the census-takers struggled to understand how to count and classify the rapidly growing American population. When the population reached 63 million in 1890, the census ushered in an innovative breakthrough. Herman Hollis invented the punch card data tool proved to be machine-readable, and these cards became the technical cornerstone of IBM.

Thus, the term large data is a rhetorical figure of reality, and when it comes to data, "big" is a fast moving target. 2008, according to some computer scientists and industry executives, "big data" began to gain attention in the scientific and technological community. The article published in Wired Magazine offers a fair chance and massive data that will affect modern times.

Wired announces that this new way of computing opens the PB era. This is a good magazine, but the "PB-byte" label is too technical to become mainstream, and inevitably, petabytes of data will give way to larger bytes: Zettabytes and Yottabytes.

At first, many scientists and engineers laughed coldly, big data was just a marketing term. But good marketing plus effective communication is a valuable skill in any field. For example, when mathematician McCarthy the term "artificial intelligence" in 1955, the ingenious wording of his application for the Rockefeller Foundation was an excellent and ideal marketing.

At the end of 2008, a group of nationally leading computer science researchers began to accept large data, collaboration between the computer Federation, the Computational Research Association and the government's National Science Foundation, which represented the concept of large data acceptance by academics and business researchers. The Computer Society has published an influential white paper, Big Data Computing: Creating a revolutionary breakthrough in business, science and society. The author is a three famous computer scientist, Landaur Breint of Carnegie Mellon University (Randale.bryant), University of California, Berkeley Landy Caze (Randyh.katz), University of Washington Edward LAZOSGA ( Edwardd.lazowska).

The above experts ' endorsement gives big data to intelligence credibility. Rod A, an IBM technology researcher and vice president of emerging Internet technology, said he liked the term very much because it led people to think in terms of the precise measure of the amount of data being processed by mechanical processing. "In fact, the big data really lies in its new uses and new insights, not so much in its data itself." "said Mr. Smith.

IBM resonates with its large data marketing, especially its customers. In 2008, Mr. Smith's team published a website explaining big data topics, and the site's popularity was greatly expanded. In 2011, the company launched its Twitter account, including #ibmbigdata. IBM has a large data newsletter, and published in January can be divided into E-book "understand big data."

Since its inception in 1976, the SAS Software Institute, the world's largest privately held software company, has been sifting through databases to develop software to look for value and nuggets. SAS, headquartered in North Carolina State CARY,N.C, has had many marketing terms in the field, including "Data Mining", "Business Intelligence" and "data analysis." ”

At first, SAS's chief marketing officer, Davis, saw large data as another industry-staged concept hype.

"I originally laughed at the term. Mr Davis recalls that his company's big corporate clients, such as banks and insurers, have dug up a lot of data for decades.

But big data is trying to find all network data and external databases. SAS's technology has taken advantage of the data assets of the Internet age to change its market. Last year, companies began using big data and "Big Data Analysis", along with "High-performance Analytics" they have been using for years. May Company appointed Paul Kent as the company's big data vice president. "We have to follow the trend. "said Mr. Davis.

Proponents of big data say the rewards far outweigh the risks. Nevertheless, intelligent technology ensures that observation, recording, and making an unprecedented inference about human rows should lead to the emergence of new ideas, whether those who create these technologies or those who use them.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)