The world ushered in the big data era marks the transformation of human thinking world

The internet has reshaped the way people communicate. The big data is different: It marks a change in the way societies handle information. Over time, big data may change the way we think about the world.

"The May-June issue of the U.S. Foreign Affairs magazine": The Rise of Big Data (the author of the British economist magazine data editor Kenneth Ners Chukil Oxford University internet Research Institute http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/6938. HTML > Internet Management and Regulation Professor Victor Meyer-Schoenbolo)

Everyone knows that the internet has changed the way businesses operate, government operates and people live. But a new, less obvious, technological trend has the same huge transformative power: "Big Data" (Bigdata). The trend towards large data begins with the fact that today there is a lot more information being disseminated than ever before, and that this trend is being applied to extraordinary new uses. Big data is very different from the Internet, although the Internet makes it much easier to collect and share data. The meaning of large data is not just communication: the essence is that we can learn from a lot of information that we can't get from a little bit of information.

Will change the way people think

In the 3rd century BC, the library of Alexandria was thought to have collected all human knowledge. And if the information of the world today is divided equally among the living, then each person will have more than 320 times times the amount of the library in Alexandria. If all this information is engraved on the disc and stacked in 5 stacks, the discs can be stacked up to the moon.

This data explosion is a relatively new phenomenon.

Only 1/4 of the world's stored information was digitized in 2000, and the rest was stored on paper, film and other analog media. But as the number of digital data has grown very quickly-doubling almost every three years-this situation has quickly reversed. Today, less than 2% of all stored information is digitized.

Given the scale of such disparity, it is unavoidable to think only quantitatively when it comes to understanding big data. But that would be misleading. Another feature of large data is its ability to use data to represent many facets of the world that have never been quantified before-a feature that can be called "data". For example, the data of location information was first due to the invention of latitude and longitude, and recently with GPS. When a computer samples several centuries of books, the text becomes the data being processed. Even friendships and hobbies are being computerized--through Facebook, for example. With cheap computer memory, high-performance processors, intelligent algorithms, smart software and mathematical knowledge borrowed from basic statistics, such data are being used in incredible new uses. The new approach is not to try to "teach" computers to drive or translate such things, instead, it is necessary to enter enough information into the computer so that they can infer probabilities, such as the probability that the traffic indicates a green light, the red light is not bright, or that the term "light" means "light" rather than "light" in a particular context.

The use of large amounts of data in this way requires us to radically change attitudes to data in three ways. The first is to collect and use large amounts of data, rather than being content with a small amount of data or samples, as statisticians have done over the past more than 100 years. The second is to abandon our preference for structured and pure data, and instead accept the disorder--in an increasing number of cases, a little imprecision is tolerable. Third, on many occasions, we need to give up the case and replace it with the acceptance of the relevant sex. Using large data rather than trying to understand the exact cause of engine failure or the disappearance of drug side effects, researchers can collect and analyze a great deal of information about such events and all the relevant material to find out the laws that might help predict future events. Big Data helps answer the question of what it is, not why--usually that is enough.

The internet has reshaped the way people communicate. The big data is different: It marks a change in the way societies handle information. Over time, big data may change the way we think about the world. As we use more and more data to understand things and make decisions, we are likely to find that many dimensions of life are random, not certain.

Two changes in the way we look at data from causality to relevance-from local to full and from pure to messy-have spawned a third change: from causality to relevance. This represents a departure from an attitude that always tries to understand the underlying causes of how the world works, and moves towards just figuring out the link between the phenomena and using that information to solve the problem.

Researchers in Canada are developing a large data tool to detect infections in preterm infants before the onset of apparent symptoms. By converting 16 vital signs, including heart rate, blood pressure, respiration and oxygen levels, into the flow of more than 1000 points per second, they have been able to find a correlation between extremely slight changes and more serious problems. Ultimately, this technology will enable doctors to take action in advance to save lives.

The impact of big data will go far beyond the scope of medicine and consumer goods: it will profoundly change the way governments operate and the nature of politics. Those who can effectively use large numbers will have a huge advantage over others in promoting economic growth, providing public services or fighting wars. So far, the most exciting results have been at the municipal level, where it is easier to get data and use the information to experiment. New York's mayor, Bloomberg (who himself is wealthy in the data industry), took the lead in an effort to use big data to improve public services and reduce costs. One example is the new fire prevention strategy.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)