The big Data age is coming, are you ready

Author: Zhang, professor, School of journalism, Fudan University

"The Big Data Age" will detonate a "Copernican revolution", the successful application of http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/13568.html "> Large data technology, will change the daily life, The form and structure of enterprise decision-making and even political governance bring astonishing political, economic, social and cultural benefits.

Speeding up the "Big Data Age"

People have always had the impression that information is a good thing. Since information is a good thing, it should be more and more. In fact, this idea is the product of the age of information scarcity. Because we had to eat as poor information and ignorance of the suffering, so desperately chasing information, possession of information, and even stubbornly believe that the more information to occupy the better, the more powerful. However, in the "Big Data Age", information is no longer scarce, and the stall of information leads to a severe glut of information. When overload information approaches the limits that people can withstand, it becomes a burden and we are overwhelmed. We have a sense of helplessness in the face of massive information.

The surging of information technology, in a short span of several years to lead to a huge amount of information. And these sudden hair out of the information far beyond the traditional human management and control capabilities, by virtue of people's existing information processing capacity has not been able to deal with the vast amount of information on speeding. In the 2000, digital storage information accounted for 1/4 of global data, and 3/4 of the information was stored in media such as newspapers, films, vinyl records and cassette tapes. And 2007, only 7% is stored in newspapers, books, pictures and other media simulation data, the rest are digital data. By 2013, non-digital data accounted for less than 2% of the data stored in the world. In the face of such information expansion, we can only exclaiming.

The influence of "big data Age" on human society is all-round. How big the impact is, it's unpredictable. The "Big Data Age" would detonate a "Copernican revolution". Rick Smolland, a famous American photographer and writer, believes that big data will become a human dashboard, an intelligent tool to help people cope with poverty, crime and pollution. Guery Kim, director of the Institute of Quantitative Sociology at Harvard University, described the changes in academic, business and government management brought about by Big data technology "in a revolution", saying that "Big data technologies will touch any one area". The successful application of large data technology will change the form and structure of personal daily life, business decision and even political governance, and bring amazing political, economic, social and cultural benefits.

The pattern of knowledge production has been changed

The knowledge here includes information, data, images, and even social attitudes, values and other symbolic meanings. Prior to the "Big Data Age", knowledge production was the product of the printing age. This knowledge production was a continuation of the 15th century Gutenberg era. The printing revolution detonated the "Copernican revolution" in the production and dissemination of human social knowledge, which made the production and dissemination of knowledge break through the monopoly of elites and nobles, and opened the mass age of knowledge dissemination. At the same time, also established the "Mechanical reproduction era" of knowledge production and dissemination mode. Compared with the printing age, the internet new media opened the "Big Data Age" is a more profound revolution. In the "Big Data Age", the production and dissemination of information is often a geometric growth, viral transmission. The media technology represented by Internet subverts the way of knowledge production and dissemination in the printing age. New media everywhere, break the traditional knowledge of the subject of knowledge production and dissemination of the monopoly, but also broke the elite and the people between the knowledge barrier, rewrite the static, one-way, linear knowledge production pattern, changed the Top-down knowledge dissemination model, the production and dissemination of knowledge into an unprecedented uncertainty.

In the "Big Data Age", our knowledge production, if we cling to the concept of knowledge production in the printing age, and follow the previous mode of knowledge, will be far behind the era. In the face of the surging information vast, the main body of traditional knowledge production is like an island of information, there is danger of being submerged at any time.

The logic of power is rewritten

Futurist Toffler, in the book "Transfer of Power", points out that there are three sources of power: violence, money and knowledge. The grade of the three is progressive. Violence is a kind of low quality power, while the money is higher, the middle quality of the power, the highest quality of power is knowledge. Knowledge has turned into today's highest quality power, and it has changed the status of the past attached to money and violence, thus becoming the essence of power, and even the highest principle of the two powers before diffusion. This is a prerequisite for further understanding of the direction of future power transfer, and can be used to explain the global scramble for knowledge control and dissemination of tools. Toffler puts forward the view that more than 20 years ago, the Futurist Toffler was very predictable, and he was acutely aware of the revolutionary impact of knowledge on power. Abdul Sayide and Lewis Simons have similar views, "The nature of power is undergoing drastic shifts, and the power of the past is due to uneven inequality between rich and poor, and now it is due to a gap in knowledge, especially technology, and the control of political and economic affairs," he said in a book entitled "New Territories rights", which they co-authored. "That is to say, who has the control of knowledge and the right to spread, who has the power of the initiative."

The power logic of the "Big Data Age" is rewritten in depth. In the political field, the power pattern can be changed profoundly because of the change of information resource disposition. In the "Big Data Age", there will be a paradoxical information layout: On the one hand, information is no longer a scarce resource, even everyone can occupy, produce, disseminate information, information readily available. This makes the power control caused by information monopoly no longer effective, the increase of information freedom promotes the democratization of politics. On the other hand, the production and dissemination of mass information is far beyond the average person's ability to digest information. In the face of mountains of information resources, ordinary people are powerless, difficult to deal with a huge amount of information. This provides an opportunity for some behavioral subjects with powerful information production and processing ability, and creates new power space. Who has the ability to digest the "Big Data Age" of information resources, who will be more power to control power.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)