The way to deal with large-scale reform of information, big data era!

The Internet has reshaped the way humans communicate, and big data is different: it represents the way in which society deals with information. With the passage of time, big data may change the way we think about the world

Title: The Rise of Big Data (Author Edited by Kenneth Neal Chuckbell, Internet Administration and Law Professor, Institute of Internet, Oxford University Victor Meyer-Schoenbloyer)

Everyone knows that the Internet has changed the way businesses run, the government, and the way people live. But a new, less obvious technology trend has the same tremendous ability to transform, Big Data. The big data trend starts with the fact that information is now spreading more than ever before and that trend is being applied to unusually new uses. Big data is very different from the Internet, although the Internet makes data collection and sharing much easier. The significance of big data is more than just communication: its essence is that we can learn from a great deal of information that we can not get from a smaller amount of information.

Will change the way of human thinking

In the 3rd century BC, the Alexandria Library was thought to have collected all of human knowledge. And if we divide the information of today's world into every living person, then each person will have more than 320 times the amount of the entire collection of the Library of Alexandria. If all these pieces of information are inscribed on the disc and stacked up, then the discs can be piled on the moon.

This data explosion is a relatively new phenomenon.

In 2000 alone, only a quarter of all stored information in the world was digitized, and the rest was stored on paper, film and other analog media. But this situation quickly reversed as the number of digital data grew very rapidly - doubling almost every three years. Today, less than 2% of all stored information is non-digitized.

Given such a disproportionate share, people are inevitably thinking quantitatively when it comes to understanding big data. However, this will be misleading. Another characteristic of big data is its ability to represent many aspects of the world in terms of data that have never been quantified before - a feature that can be called "dataized." For example, the earliest digitization of location information was due to the invention of latitude and longitude and the recent arrival of GPS. When the computer samples books over centuries, the text becomes processed data. Even friendship and hobbies have been digitized - for example, via Facebook. With inexpensive computer memory, high-performance processors, intelligent algorithms, clever software, and mathematical knowledge borrowed from basic statistics, such a class of data is being applied to incredible new uses. Instead of trying to "teach" computers to do such things as driving or translating, the new approach is to enter enough information into the computer that they can deduce probabilities such as the probability of a traffic light glowing green and a red glowing light , Or the probability that "light" means "light" rather than "light" in a particular context.

Utilizing a large amount of data in this way requires that we completely change the attitude toward the data in three ways. The first is to collect and use large amounts of data instead of just a small amount of data or samples, as statisticians have done for more than 100 years. The second is to abandon our preference for structured and pure data and turn to clutter - in a growing number of situations, little inaccuracy can be tolerated. Thirdly, on many occasions, we need to abandon the investigation of the whole thing and replace it with the acceptance of relevance. Using big data, rather than trying to understand the exact cause of an engine breakdown or the disappearance of side effects, researchers can gather and analyze a wealth of information about such events and all relevant material to find out the laws that may help predict future events. The big data helps answer the question, not the question of why - usually it's enough.

The Internet has reshaped the way humans communicate. Big data is different: it marks the changes in how society deals with information. With the passage of 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 aspects of life are random, not definitive.

From Causality to Relevance The two changes in the way we view data - from local to total and from pure to messy - have spawned a third change: from causality to relevance. This means saying goodbye to always trying to understand the underlying causes behind the way in which the world works, and moving to just need to understand the linkages between the phenomena and use the information to solve the problem.

Researchers in Canada are developing a big data tool to detect infections in preterm infants before obvious symptoms appear. By translating 16 vital signs, including heart rate, blood pressure, respiration and blood oxygenation levels, into more than 1,000 data points per second, they have been able to find the correlation between a very slight change and a more serious one. Ultimately, this technology will allow doctors to take early action to save lives.

The impact of big data goes far beyond medicine and consumer goods: it will profoundly change the way governments operate and the nature of politics. Those who can effectively use big data will have a tremendous advantage over others in promoting economic growth, providing public services or in waging war. So far, the most exciting result has been at the municipal level, where it is easier to obtain data and experiment with this information. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who built his own around the data industry, pioneered an effort to improve public services and reduce costs with big data. One example is the new fire prevention strategy.

The buildings illegally opened in the house are more likely to catch fire than other buildings. Every year, New York City receives 25,000 complaints about overcrowded houses, but only 200 inspectors who handle complaints are in the city. An analyst panel in the mayor's office found that big data can help address this gap in demand and resources. The team created a database of all the 900,000 buildings in the city and added data collected by 19 departments in the city: arrears of seizure records, unusual hydropower use, arrears in payment, service interruptions, ambulance use, Local crime rates, rat complaints, and more. Next, they compared the database to the record of building fires by severity over the past five years in the hope of finding relevance. Sure enough, the type of building and the year of construction are fire-related factors. However, one less-than-expected result was the correlation between the buildings licensed for exterior brick construction and the lower incidence of severe fires.

With all this data, the team has set up a system that helps them determine which housing congestion complaints need to be dealt with urgently. None of the characteristic data of the buildings they recorded was the cause of the fire, but the data was correlated with an increase or decrease in fire hazards. This knowledge proves to be of great value:

In the past, only 13% of housing vacancies were issued when house inspectors were present. After the introduction of the new method, the percentage has risen to 70% - and the efficiency has been greatly enhanced.

Big data is also helping to increase the transparency of democratic governments. A movement based on the concept of "open data" has come into existence and goes beyond the freedom of information laws that are now commonplace in developed democracies. Proponents of the campaign have called for the government to open up to the public ordinary data in its hands.

At the same time, as governments push for the use of big data, they also need to protect the public from the monopoly of the illicit market. The rules governing big data may even become a corner of the world. Out of concern about antitrust and privacy concerns, European governments are already cracking down on Google. Facebook may be the target of a similar move around the world because it holds too much personal data.

Diplomats should be prepared to confront the flow of information as if they treat free trade.

Big data is bound to change the way we live, work and think. The worldview based on emphasizing causality is being challenged by advocating relevance. The possession of knowledge used to mean understanding of history, but now it means the ability to predict the future. Solving the challenges posed by big data will not be easy.

In a world where decisions are increasingly dominated by data, what is the use of human intuition or disregard of the truth? If everybody resorts to data and uses big data tools, then unpredictability - such as human instinct, adventure, accident or even mistakes - may be the key to differences.

If that is the case, then there is a need to dedicate a place dedicated to human factors - leaving room for intuition, common sense, luck to ensure that they are not crowded with data and machine generated answers.

This will have a major impact on the concept of social progress. Big data allows us to experiment faster and explore more clues. These advantages should lead to more innovations. But at some point, the invention of the spark burst is the data can not be performed. Had Henry Ford turned to big data algorithms to look at what customers wanted, the answer would be "faster horses," and Ford's not-so-famous car line. In the world of big data, what needs to be developed is precisely the most closely related trait - creativity, intuition and ambition, because human intelligence is the source of progress.

Big data is a resource and a tool. Its purpose is to inform rather than explain; it is intended to promote understanding, but it still leads to misunderstanding - the crux lies in how much people have mastered it. We must embrace this technology in a manner that not only appreciates its power but also recognizes its limits.