Thinking change in the "Big Data Age"

Schoenberg, author of the Big Data age, believes that harnessing massive amounts of data can bring great benefits to society and business.

"Host" 2013 years, a book called "Big Data Times" of the books set off a burst of reading wind. In the eyes of domestic and foreign industry, this book has created the world's largest data research precedent. Schoenberg, the author of the book, a prominent data scientist, has pointed out in the book that the information storms brought about by large data are profoundly changing people's lives, business forms and ways of thinking. This March, our correspondent interviewed the author of the Big Data age in Beijing.

Let's listen to the big Data age in Schoenberg's eyes.

"Narrator" was born in Victor Maire Schoenberg, Austria, and was hailed as "the prophet of the great data age". He has taught at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, and the National University of Singapore, and has served as an information-policy think-tank for many businesses, institutions and national governments. In early 2013, Schoenberg published a new book, The Big Data age, whose Chinese version was even 2 months ahead of the original English edition. Once published, it caused the industry to vibrate.

Reporter：

Your new book is named after the concept of "big data". Today, many people are also talking about big data. What is the exact definition of large data in your book? Does it mean that the size of the data we make every day is huge?

Schoenberg：

In many ways, yes. We are making massive amounts of data, much more than ever before. But more importantly, we can use and harness this data to increase your understanding of the world, which can bring great benefits to society and business.

Reporter：

I've also heard that big data and computers predict the outcome of the 2012 American election, is it true?

Schoenberg：

It's true. But this is relatively small data rather than large data. The Obama administration, or Obama's team, uses big data analysis to target some, especially small-scale voters. They bought some TV commercials, and some people didn't understand it because they found out that certain voters would watch TV that time. The Obama team is well known for its use of large data, which is better than any political team in history.

Reporter：

Since we are still in the early stages of large data, which country is in a leading position in this process? How do you think China is doing on big data compared to the United States?

Schoenberg：

Clearly, the United States is in the lead in the development of big data, especially in the West coast of the United States, California and Washington state. This is a new era, whenever a new era comes, for each person has the opportunity and new challenges. So even if the United States is a bit ahead, it is still a very early stage, and it gives many countries, including China, a great opportunity to achieve economic development and leapfrog development, as if the digital era repeats itself. So it is both an opportunity and a challenge for China to grasp the big data and go beyond development.

Reporter：

Many countries, like the United States and India, are doing open government projects. For example, a few years ago, the U.S. government built a website called data.gov to open up all kinds of government data to the public. What do you think is causing the U.S. government to do that?

Schoenberg：

The Government has a great opportunity. If they can open up the data, the whole society and business can benefit from it. Because they can provide new services in this regard. One of the most obvious examples we have seen in the United States is the GPS,GPS positioning system as a military system that was used by the U.S. military before it was publicly available to anyone. We derive tremendous value from the free location data provided by it. The U.S. government sees it as a contribution to the data infrastructure, so it is free to open the GPS.

Reporter：

By contrast, the Chinese government has not done very well in this respect. A large number of public sector data are not disclosed. What do you think is the obstacle?

Schoenberg：

I don't know enough about China to answer this question completely. But what we need to know is that no country in the world is too willing to disclose their data. Any government agency thinks its data is confidential and competitive, so it should be protected. We must not only look at the next year or two, but we need to take a long view in order to realize that open data can actually become competitive and bring potential economic benefits to society. When the government is to balance data confidentiality with data openness, the long-term benefits of data openness outweigh the short-term gains. If the government does not disclose data resources, it will miss the opportunity to drive the big data age and the opportunity to develop a large data economy.

"Host" in the face of the vast sea, numerous and diverse data information, Schoenberg in the "Big Data Age" book, for us to comb the latest trend of large data. And for individuals, businesses and governments, the key to the future is how to deal with and use good data. In the future, we will continue to focus on the changes in the Big data field.

(Editor: Lu Guang)