Xie: Big Data drives new changes

In the weeks before the 2009 swine flu outbreak, Google engineers published an article in the journal Nature that shocked public health officials and computer scientists, claiming that Google was able to predict the spread of winter flu-not only to spread across the United States, You can even target flu targets to regions and states.

It turns out that Google is doing this by looking at people's online search records. After the flu outbreak, Google found that the keyword associated with the flu has also seen a burst of growth in search volume. Every day, Google receives more than 3 billion search instructions from around the world. With such a huge amount of data resources to support and help, Google through the search relevance analysis to make accurate predictions.

This is a story that was described in last year's American bestseller, The Big Data age, and was used to visualize the concept of big data as a high-frequency hot word that was the focus of the Internet community in the 2012.

Global information Consultancy International Data Corporation (IDC) the technical definition of large data is a new technology architecture that captures value from large volumes of data through high-speed capture, discovery, or analysis. Large data has 4V characteristics: Volume (volume), Velocity (velocity), produced (diversity), value (values).

Xie, a well-known internet commentator, recently received an exclusive interview with Caixin reporter, who made a thorough exposition of the big Data and its revolutionary application. He believes that big data will usher in a major era of transformation, not only will lead the IT field of technological change, but also will profoundly affect all aspects of the world.

"In a word, the big data age, is the human information society in the experience of the computer age, the internet era after the end of the stage, a data of the Earth at the rapid formation." "Xie said.

The big data is going through its influence from macro-society to medium-micro market. In 2012, the U.S. government launched a "Big Data development Program" to improve America's capabilities in scientific discoveries, environmental and biomedical research, education and national security to address the most challenging problems facing the United States. In his 2013 State of the Union address, U.S. President Barack Obama saw the printing technology as a new impetus to revive U.S. manufacturing and even lead the next manufacturing revolution, and 3D printing technology could be understood as a data-making process in the big data age.

In Xie's view, China, which is struggling to follow in the computer and Internet era, should not be outdone. However, China, which lacks the mechanism of social information sharing, has to start by breaking the information barrier and the institutional closure.

Caixin Reporter: According to your classification, the human Modern information society is divided into computer, Internet, large data three stages. We are entering the big data age, specifically, what is going to bring about the change in the world we live in?

Xie: Now the whole world is in the inflection point before a big transformation. Prior to the 20, the world enjoyed the global dividend after the cold War, trade barriers, trade barriers, currency barriers were broken, the rapid growth of global trade has contributed to the development of the world economy. But the financial crisis of 2008 has profoundly affected the world, and the impetus for global trade has been largely depleted. The world needs to find a new way out, big data will be new impetus.

The large data age is the ending stage of the human information society. Before the computer age and the internet era, are for the big data age to do bedding and preparation. The core of the computer age is computing power, greatly improve the ability of people to deal with data; The Internet era solves the problem of information movement and connection, while the big data age can make the world all things all data, let people in the data utilization optimize the real operation and behavior, make the global system run more efficient.

From the physical world to the data world, this is a vast world. If people can break through the cost of data collection, storage and analysis processing, can easily access and use large data, fundamentally promote the manufacturing industry, the internet industry, finance and other economic areas of change, and even change the way social management.

Caixin journalist: What is the core of the big data age compared with the computer age and the Internet age?

Xie: The key word in the big data age is openness and integration, and the thought of "Everything can be data". Everything can be computerized.

If the world is viewed as an understandable ocean of data, then large data is a worldview that permeates all fields.

Many companies now speak more about "data size" than big data. Large data should be fully integrated, open public, dynamic and timely. Such large data can provide people with a new perspective. Schoenberg, a professor at Oxford University, in the Big Data age, describes the thinking changes in the big data age, emphasizing that all data rather than random samples are not precision but confounding, and not causal relationships but related relationships.

Now some companies such as Facebook have been sharing data on their platforms. Some countries are also experimenting with data disclosure. The United States Government, through its large data Web site "data.gov", has disclosed a number of 100,000 open databases, established an open government coalition with dozens of countries, and opened social public data to any third party. This is going to be a trend, and big data is a major trend, involving individuals, businesses and governments alike.

The big Data age requires new logic and thinking, and imagination. Everything can be data, small to "God particle", large to the entire universe, are made up of data information. The behavior of human society can also be data, all problems can be solved by means of data.

Moreover, the vast majority of the cost of the data age has been precipitated in history and broken down throughout the social system. Even before the industrial society, the world has a large number of data, the computer age and the Internet era is the accumulation of data collection, storage and analysis of the various capabilities.

Caixin Reporter: The internet era profound change and impact on the media, telecommunications, retail and other traditional industries, the big data age will be how to promote the development of real economy and change?

Xie: Stories of the past in the Internet age will repeat themselves in the big data age. Now that the big data is still in its infancy, the future changes in the real economy and business will be significant in the following areas:

The first is the field of health care. In the past, standardized average treatment will be changed to accurate and digitized medical care. Through the use of data and sensing equipment, can be accurate treatment, and even organ regeneration.

This has passed the conceptual stage of the ideological revolution, entered the practice stage, then see who can effectively reduce costs and then large-scale promotion.

The second is manufacturing. With the current 3D printing as the representative of the data manufacturing, is a personalized, new manufacturing methods. Do not need a mold, you can do the seamless docking of different materials. Even things that were difficult to make in the past, such as human organs, can also be made by means of data reduction. This new type of data manufacturing, from data to physical transformation will enter low-cost, large-scale, break the time limit of the new historical stage. This will redefine the industrial chain and business model of many product manufacturing industries, and the data integration required for design, manufacturing and circulation processes will become upstream. The data-making manufacturing industry will also greatly reduce inventory and even achieve zero inventory.

Third, finance, aviation and other industries will be fully electronic, such as relying on large data, can accurately predict the trend of ticket prices.

Four is the field of military security. This is not a commercial area, but the reliance on large data is higher and may be the first area to achieve breakthroughs. Background support for military security, satellite systems, data analysis systems and so on to all kinds of data requirements higher.

In addition, the most recent from the big data is the internet industry. The Internet may migrate to the data service industry in the future, and the way it used to make money through Web services and apps would be a tiny branch. The whole data service industry chain is composed of data production, transmission, acquisition, storage processing and analysis, and various traditional industries will be categorized into a number of industrial chain links.

The use of large data will generate more business model innovation space. More than 10,000 simulations of weather conditions in the next two years are being carried out on more than 1 million sites in the United States, a start-up company called Climate Company. Subsequently, the company provided crop insurance for thousands of farmers, based on data on root structure and soil porosity, combined with simulation results. This is the traditional, standardized insurance products more refined, personalized, this is a new business model, the use of human, social and natural three kinds of large data. This represents a direction in the big data age.

Caixin Reporter: What is the specific direction of innovation in the big Data age?

Xie: The big Data age has front desk, middle office and backstage three main battlefield. Front desk is the data terminal, responsible for data acquisition and transmission, such as mobile phones, computers, smart glasses, automobiles and various sensors, the material world and human society of all data. This is also the main battleground for the current battle. There are countless innovations, such as Google's glasses, its own car, Apple's cell phone, sensors built into the pill, and so on. Nowadays, the concept of the popular Internet of things and mobile web is included in the concept of large data.

Middle is the data center, is the storage and analysis of various types of data platform. Now the equipment manufacturers, the IT industry focused on this link, they will be to large data integration and solution providers. Cloud computing falls into this category.

The real backstage is based on large data innovation. There are no real leaders based on big data models. Perhaps the company has not yet been born. But the innovation of business models based on big data will certainly spawn a large number of companies in five or six years ' time, and the next Google and next Facebook will be in the big data age.

In the big data age, when efficiency can be raised several times, the new way of life and economic operation must be produced, the impact of the traditional way will be subversive.

Caixin Reporter: So, large data will be the source of competitiveness of enterprise innovation. But the big data itself is a macroscopic concept that requires a top-down impetus, and government power has an indispensable role in it. Rise to the level of government and the state, what can big data do? What does China have to learn from?

Xie: Big data will change the way social management becomes the forefront of national competition. America's breakthrough is to open up the government, set up an Open data platform, data.gov Public information on this platform, the common format, so that everyone can get. This is very effective in the public sphere, for crime prevention, traffic management, education, and anti-welfare fraud. The federal government requires states to disclose relevant data. The United States, Britain and other countries also formed an open Government alliance. In the field of public administration, the investment of large data is low, the yield is high and the effect is the fastest.

This is well worth China's reference. In the big data age, China has plenty of opportunities because the Chinese market is big enough. In addition, China has another factor-China has a highly centralized central government, and if it is right, walking on the road can indeed show greater efficiency in some respects. In the age of computers and the Internet, China has remained largely in sync with the world as a follower. Now that the world is entering a big data age, China cannot lag behind.

But China's fundamental problem is that there is no standard for open information and no social data sharing mechanism. Both the government and the company, China's concept of information sharing is quite conservative. At the same time, China lacks the perfect market economic system and the rule of law as the Foundation support.

In addition, China's innovative environment is not the same as in Europe and the United States. China's past decade has been a period of economic growth, rapid growth and demographic dividend, so that China seems to have some of the cost of not rushing to innovate, in many areas relatively closed, stand back, or even bad currency to expel good currency.

For China's new government, the past model is unsustainable and needs to find a new way out, and big data is a necessary choice.

China can start by establishing a unified database in various fields, and consider the national strategy of large data. So many realistic problems can be solved, such as budget openness, anti-corruption and so on. For example, when allocating funds, the central government can require all departments and local governments to set up a database and make it public, using the principle of common, open and shared, where every penny will be available for data. The performance of the assessment criteria can also be data.

Thus, many problems are translated into concrete operations rather than ideological issues. Big-Data thinking can provide many ways to address China's institutional barriers.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)