Big data

By the Viet Nam War era, we already exceeded the amount of data we could meaningfully digest, said my uncle an Air Force Intelligence officer. He joked: "...our side had a single stack of a Russian printout and prized it like the Dead Sea Scrolls until somebody pointed out that the endless rooms full of paper we generated every day that were filled with meaningless crap..."
For all of the data that the former East German State Security (Stasi) was gathering on its people -- they even had jars of clothing items to better track them with hounds should they flee -- the Stasi did not foresee the Wall coming down. Neither did the CIA.
I, myself, work in Analytics: I don't know how many times I was able to effectively predict the outcomes of decisions for firms only to be the messenger who gets shot by those who, as in the movie, "A Few Good Men", "can't handle the truth!"
When you have Exa bytes of data that you're sifting for correlations, that 1 in a billion false correlation becomes something you'll see for certain. Ye olde Six Sigma confidence level will be far too loose by factor of a billion!
From a privacy standpoint, worry about that false correlation: was it not a young boy who got held in custody for a few hours by a mindless TSA security drone? The boy had the same name as someone on the high security risk list.
Franz Kafka was a prophet!

Most of that pyramid is porn.

We collected all available macroeconomic data at one resource. Enjoy using it! ( www.knoema.com )

I do not believe that knowledge other than being a very valuable possession, however infinitesimal its quantity may be. Indeed, if a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?

Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895)

In stead of a web 2.0 we need a web 0.2
Quality in stead of quantity

The servers need to be placed in cold areas like Greenland where they need heating most of the year. Then the heat from the server parks is not wasted.

Static storage in holographic memories would be helpful

Interest video there.

There are data bytes and there are data bytes. What about the contents? It looks like loads of data bytes are like a body of water, they can be used to ferry a boat load, or sink it, as the old Chinese saying has it.

There are ways of making sense of small sets of data, but is there a way of making sense of the complete set?

is there any information in this video or just meaningless data OR am I alone in thinking this is another worthless video by TE in their relentless attempt to destroy the quality of their magazine for which it was known

the thinking at TE is to generate enough meaningless data so that it's prediction become self fulfilling.

These numbers are not shocking to me. We are becoming more of a social media/technology based society, always trying to make things better and more simple. The only thing that I have a problem on would be the privacy part mentioned on the internet. Every internet user should know that everything he/she does on the internet is monitored and will be recorded and can never be erased. Nothing you do will ever technically be "private" because what you are doing is being stored in a database the second that you are doing it.

It is crazy how much data has been processed and replicated within the past years. If the forecast is true we really are in for a surprise when data gets into thousands of exabytes. Being able to process this much data, and store it cheaper, is really going to allow individuals, businesses, and governments as a whole to operate faster and easier. Also, did I hear something about contacts that can produce augmented reality, something that smart phones are only now capable of in the last year. Technology is advancing so fast who honestly knows where the world of technology will take us by the year 2015.

The difference in amount of images verses the amount of voice shows how communication has changed. It's much easier now for people to live out the saying a picture says a million ways words now. But when you look at the total amount of data communication, it's easy to see how communications have become virtual. It's insane how much data is projected for the year and how connected humans are to technology.

The increase in the amount of data is unbelievable. But also the amount of data storage has grown massively. The cloud has provided so much storage for all the data collected. Although storage is good, the amount vulnerability it gives is dangerous and crosses the line of privacy. There needs to be laws put down on privacy at this rate.

All I'll say, Isaac Asimov 1956:

http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

Soon our machines will be omniscient.

The idea that most of the bytes of information consists of video and pictures is misleading. Video and pictures take up an incredibly large about of memory compared to simple text data. Thus, we could be sending five times as much gross text messages (not TXT messages mind you) as we do video's and those figures would still be accurate

Ivan et al,

Thank you for the refere ce to Knoema - Very interesting site.

Otherwise, I wish we stick to the chart format vs the youtube clip.

Now I recalled first seeing "petabytes" in some vendor marketing material back in the 1990s. At that time, it was mispelled as "pedabyte" which struck some as funny. Interesting to see it has since won regular usage due to technological progress (with correct spelling).

Note that these numbers come from an organization with every incentive to inflate them.

I for one welcome this, and can not wait to see what the future holds.

too much data right now, wait till we have developed super computers and algorythims to process that data and make it into useful information.

it is possible that this data can be used for evil reasons, but i believe that there are more good people than evil people in the world and this information will ultimatly be used for good reasons

All this data and information is available and growing at an incredible rate, yet we remember less today than before. Devolution, how would Darwin explain this?

Despite the enormous increase of data fortunately or unfortunately, the personality of an individual can not be digitized.

It is interesting how the mind makes decisions.
You may have thousands of facts on let's say automobile engine technology and you are an automotive engineer who has tinkered for a lifetime in mechanical repair.

But the decision making process may only boil down to a small handful of irrational preferences:
You want a blue convertible with heated seats.

And you end up with a Geo Metro Convertible, Photo attached:

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/2090766/1991-geo-metro

All that data, does not necessarily lead to wise decisions.