The post advantage of the big data age

Article | Shiji

The only source of human knowledge is the record and collation of past experience, and data is the carrier of this record, so the value of the data is first and foremost the source of knowledge. If the traditional data is the source of part of human knowledge, the large data in modern sense will gradually become the source of all human knowledge as the range of human records expands.

Data is the measurement and recording of the objective world, which is also a record of history and reality. When President Garfield was modernizing the American census system in 1869, he found that the data contained not only the laws of social development, but also a new way of writing history:

"Until now, historians have studied a country in a holistic way, they can only tell us about emperors and the history of war, but historians cannot say much about the people themselves-the growth, strength, detail and regularity of every life in our vast society ... And the census magnifies our observations to the homes, families, factories, coal mines, fields, prisons, hospitals, and so on, where all of humanity is strong and vulnerable, making new historical records possible. ”

Looking back today, this is a very forward-looking statement. As humans leap into the big data age, data is not only the source of new knowledge, but also the most important, reliable and best way to record history. From now on, all human history, whether digital, document, picture, audio and video, will be in the form of data, data is static history, history is dynamic data. The fragment of history is the free data, the fog of history is the vague data, the blind spot of history is the missing data. The history of data construction, which is always alive with precise details and the richer the data, will make it possible for future historians to reproduce society better through data.

In addition to discovering knowledge and recording history, the book argues that the peak form of human use of data is to train machines to acquire intelligence through data, and that, in the near future, ubiquitous computing devices and networks will work and serve human beings like intelligent people. That means we're moving towards an intelligent society, in this new society, due to accurate calculation and prediction, the whole society can be like countless large and small bearings and gears, interlocking, teeth matching, day-to-day management will be optimized through data, various tasks, cooperation can be seamless docking, The cost of social operation can be greatly reduced, and more importantly, more and more work will be replaced by computers or robots. This is both progress and challenge. Looking back at the agricultural and industrial eras, human beings continue to develop the natural environment on which we live, from the surface to the ground, the resource of rational resources end up with a day of exhaustion, and large data will become an inexhaustible and inexhaustible new resources, on this piece of resources, and then through software and algorithms, human will build an intelligent world.

Data is becoming the most important soil and foundation in the world.

In this critical juncture of social transformation, China, as a developing country that is catching up with developed countries, will give us unprecedented opportunities. For example, the United States used decades of efforts to establish a universal credit system, today, because of the customer's trading data, Alibaba in just a few minutes can decide whether to issue a loan. With abundant data everywhere, China's national credit system could be built in a relatively short period of time, at a smaller cost. And, as the popularity of the internet, credit cards will be data, virtualization, physical credit cards will be significantly reduced or even disappear, which means that our banks do not need to be like Bank of America to build so many physical outlets and automatic teller machines. Another example, because of the emergence of intelligent online education platform, the future of education resources will not be confined to the cement-reinforced schools, China's shortage of educational resources may be a rapid and substantial relief. In addition, wearable computer equipment, intelligent software diagnostic system, telemedicine and other technologies will ease the shortage of medical resources and professionals.

All kinds of opportunities can be summed up as "after the advantage."

Take the bank's automatic teller machine for example. As can be seen from the table, in recent years, China has a rapid increase in automatic teller machines. In 2012, the average number of ATM machines per 100,000 adults in China was 37.51, but compared with Britain, America, Japan, Canada and other developed countries, our gap is still very large: Canada's average of 100,000 adults have automatic teller machine for 205 units, the United States for 173 units, Japan for 127 units. If the gap is to be narrowed and flattened, it will certainly take many years for China to do so. But with the advent and popularization of large data and internet finance, most financial transactions can be done through virtual accounts. It can be foreseen that the future of society will not need so many entities to deposit machines, if we can now based on long-term, scientific planning, you can bridge the construction of these cash machine links, save the corresponding costs, this is the advantage of the post.

Data source: World Bank, automated teller Rogue (ATMs) (per adults), Http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FB. ATM. Totl. P5), "-" means no annual data for the year.

Around 2001, Mr. Xiaokai, a Chinese-American economist, once suggested that if China only attached importance to technological imitation and neglected institution-building, the latter advantage might turn into a later disadvantage, but I think the later advantage we have now does not fall into this category. The late-onset advantage is that mankind is striding forward from industrial civilization to information civilization, because of the impact of large data, the advent of intelligent society, there are some new ways to solve some old problems on the horizon of mankind, these methods are not steel and cement, but software and data!

But it is not easy to grasp such a post advantage in global competition. The competition between countries is on the surface of science and technology competition and economic competition, but in the final analysis, it is the competition of national quality and culture. Not a healthy, rational, with the times of culture, a country can hardly become strong, the book's efforts, is to try in China, the data of this technology symbol into a cultural symbol, the big data this high-end elite topic into a popular topic, so that data culture into the Chinese people's vision, into the Chinese people's consciousness and blood.

In the face of another wave of technology, governments around the world, including the developed countries in Europe and the United States, are slow to react. The development of information technology today, it is not in the "promotion" of social progress, but in the "pull" social progress. As mentioned above, today's social facilities, regulatory provisions have lagged behind the development of information technology, the energy of technology to be fully released, society must rebuild its own infrastructure and control system. Looking back at America's Gilded Age and progressive era, it is in the transition from agricultural society to industrial Society, the United States seized the opportunity in time, not only successfully dissolved the social crisis, but also achieved the rise of great powers. Now a new social form is coming to us, and at this turning point, strategic choice is of particular importance to any country, and the biggest responsibility and challenge is the government.

But the construction and progress of any country cannot be wholly tied to the government. Without mobilizing the power of the whole society, without real citizens, the country's progress will lack a long-term impetus, and its progress can only rely on external stimuli and the drag of outside forces, the result is: follow the developed countries behind the pace. There are many examples and lessons in the Chinese society's thousands of-year feudal dynasties. Citizens, countless citizens, are the driving force behind the continuous progress of a society. For policymakers in China, the key is to realize that the energy of new technology will break the balance of power, in addition to the traditional boundaries, there have been some new, callable resources, must have new ideas, new means to integrate, call these resources.

Change does not necessarily mean progress, but progress must be changed. We look forward to more progress and change in China. This is in the government, in the Chinese public, but also in China's cultural innovation.

(Excerpt from Mr. Shiji's new book "The Top of the data")

Data, since ancient times, census, agricultural statistics, military warfare, political calculation ... Small numbers help administering. It is one of the main reasons why the United States flourished and the data culture was entrenched.

Information explosion, interconnection, intelligent City times, large data, even with the avalanche of the potential to sweep the world, government governance, business nuggets, the public should be fair and justice, large data has been given a new historical mission.

In "The top of the data" in this book, from small data age to the rise of large data, the author of a grand view of history, culture, large data, give us a picture of data science, wisdom and culture panorama. The book starts with the foundation of the United States, by expounding the characteristics of the early times, civil War times, gilded times, progressive times, sampling times and large data times, this paper systematically combs the formation of American data culture, expounds its way of managing the country's data, expounds the weakness of China's data culture, and forecasts the future of the data world.

"Respecting facts, talking with data", "advocating knowledge and rationality, using data innovation", the author not only aims to inherit the Renyu of "number word" management, but also tries to transform the scientific symbol of data into a cultural symbol in China and form a cultural discourse system.

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