Welcome to the age of "Big data"

In the past few years, I have developed a habit in my life. Wherever I travel, like in the United States or anywhere, I carry my mobile phone with me. Generally speaking, mobile phones have become very popular, so I have not thought about the meaning of this habit (in addition to the loss of mobile phone when panic.)

But last week, I took part in a seminar organized by the Brookings Institution (Brookings Centric) and Bloom Center (Blum Center) on the theme of development and the global economy. Now, I'm starting to look at mobile phones with new eyes. The reason for this is that after discussions with aid workers, medical officials and American diplomats, I have come to a clear conclusion: often neglected mobile phones, not only are changing the lifestyle of Western society, but also changing the lives of people in poor countries. This, in turn, creates an interesting possibility to reconstruct the various parts of the way the global development business operates.

Today, emerging-market countries have about 2.5 billion mobile subscribers. In countries such as the Philippines, Mexico and South Africa, mobile penetration is close to 100% and Uganda is 85%. This not only allows people to build closer ties than ever before (which has significant political and commercial significance), but also enhances the transparency of their activities, habits and ideas. This is important because in the past it was extremely difficult to monitor the situation of people in poor countries, especially when they were scattered in vast areas.

Think about what happened to the earthquake in Haiti 2.5 ago. When the quake struck, Haitians were scattered all over the country, and aid agencies were sprawled to find out where to provide aid. Traditionally, they have been able to find people in need of assistance only by flying over the area or rushing to the site. But some researchers at Columbia University (Columbia University) and the Caroline Scar College in Sweden (Karolinska Cato) have taken a different approach: they started tracking the internal SIM cards of Haitians ' mobile phones, Thus, the position and direction of the mobile phone holder are judged. As stated in a United Nations report, the move helped them "accurately analyse the destinations of more than 600,000 Haitians fleeing Port-au-Prince." "Later, when the cholera outbreak occurred in Haiti, the same group of researchers again through the tracking SIM card to put drugs to the right place, to prevent the spread of the epidemic."

Currently, aid groups are not only tracking the real phones, but also monitoring the use of mobile phones and billing patterns. If the data suddenly changes, it could herald an intensification of economic woes – much more accurate than gross domestic product data. Within the United Nations, the Secretary-General is launching a project called Global Pulse to screen the so-called "big data" of 2.5 ai (1 ai equals 10 of 18 bytes) per day worldwide. It also includes data from social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. These social-media sites are extremely popular in some emerging market countries, such as Indonesia, one of the most obsessed with Twitter on earth. Thus, if the United Nations (or other agencies) discovers that certain keywords have suddenly increased in frequency, it may provide early warning of some sort of dilemma. For example, if social media mentions food or ethnic conflicts, it could herald famine or domestic unrest. Similarly, medical researchers have come to realize in the past few years that social media references to infection in a given area are an effective early warning of an epidemic-more timely than official warnings from doctors in public hospitals.

Unsurprisingly, this progress has sparked controversy. This is because, just as the popularity of social media has caused a lot of concern about privacy violations in the West, some observers are worried about the negative effects of the technological revolution in emerging markets. Not all the people who want to track this data have good thoughts. Facebook may allow activists to speak out against the government (as it did in the Arab Spring), but social-media data can also help authoritarian governments monitor people. The data can also be used by enterprises, and some agencies are taking steps to use the data to develop credit scores for the poor.

But the concerns are not binding on the United Nations. On the contrary, Robert Parik, a former IT expert and now in charge of the UN's global pulsation Department, argues that we should let the 2.5-byte Big Data serve the international common interest. He is eager to use the data to build a social media version of the "Meteorological Observatory" to examine the direction of public debate, identify economic trends and predict impending problems for the benefit of the international community. Although the idea may sound implausible, economists have been able to use such information to track the economic development of the world's poorest regions, with a much higher degree of accuracy and timeliness than ever before.

In other words, the cell phone in my pocket is not just about connecting me to my friends. Now, mobile phones are part of the common experience (and database) of humanity, and the experience is global, and its depth and effectiveness are increasing every day. Most of us have not yet realized the meaning of it. Whether you're sitting at a holiday beach, sitting in a boring office, or anywhere else in the world, this is a thought-provoking and exciting idea.

Translator/邢嵬

(Editor: Technology)