Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Big Data? We are just getting warmed up.

Humans are great at generating data.  Twitter mentions, topic trending, fb likes, status updates, pinning boards. What is Big Data?  Wikipedia describes it as,

"Big data[1][2] is a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications. The challenges include capture, curation, storage,[3] search, sharing, transfer, analysis,[4] and visualization."

Our ability to organise and analyse this data is being outrun by our ability to generate data.  Is there a fix?  Can distributed processing of data on users smartphones help share the load?  Lots of questions surrounding Big Data and I'm not really concerned about any of them.  Technology will prevail.

However, is this only the tip of the iceberg?  Definitely.  We can't even begin to imagine how much digital data the human body will be producing in 10 years time.  Potentially every cell of every connected human will be providing "status updates", tweeting health problems, predicting disease weeks and months before conventional diagnosis.   Where will this data be stored, who will own it and how can it be used to improve our lives and improve society as a whole? I don't have the answers but you can bet your bottom euro Apple and Google will be fighting it out in the court room for the rights to your biological data.

I believe that we will start to treat our bodies more like we treat our smartphones, laptops and tablets.  We will require battery life status in the form of heart, liver, kidney function, what brain processes are running, do we have enough swap space?  We will run virus scans regularly, check for updates to our internal tech and ultimately we will be completely hackable.

The data obtained for each individual will be incredibly powerful especially when combined with the other 8 billion individuals who are also self humanalysing (patent pending).  When a crime is commited by an individual we will be able to replay the exact biological and chemical actions of the brain of the perpetrator.  The uses of this data, when used for good, will improve society immeasurably.

Thanks for reading,
Tom