Big Data: The Internet is Watching You!

Internet has certainly come a long way since its humble beginnings as Arpanet. Big data - the huge amount of information accumulated by online data centers - has become a billion-dollar market, and data science is a rapidly growing industry. From business, to the environment, to education, big data analytics offers exciting possibilities. In this episode of Fw:Thinking, Jonathan Strickland decodes the future of big data and explores the opportunity these algorithms can provide.

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[TRANSCRIPT]:
Think you are obsessed with your smart phone?

Wait until you hear how much it thinks about you!

Like any good motivational speaker, the Internet comes from humble beginnings. It comes from Arpanet, that's the first computer network. And originally there were just two computers connected to it. But it crashed the very first time they tried to send a one word message across. In fact, it crashed after they typed in three whole letters.

Flash forward about 50 years or so and now the average person is producing huge amounts of digital information through things like internet searches, online purchases, emails, social media. And all that information is being stored on server farms, which leads us to ask the question - why would anyone do that?

I mean, who really cares that I'm about to watch yet another cat video, or that I tweeted six times during last week's Game of Thrones?

Winter is coming.

Corporations and governments. That's who.

And big data is what makes it all possible.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Big data, that's a giant android who does not use contractions. No, we're actually talking about the huge amount of information generated by the Internet, and our ability to sift through it and make sense of it all.

Do you want to see big data in action? Well in 2000, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey was able to generate more information about our universe in a few weeks than we had accumulated in the history of astronomy!

And in 2008, Google was able to predict flu outbreaks by tracking searches for things like "flu symptoms" and "where to buy a thermometer."

And if you've ever bought anything online, you've probably also seen the "you may also be interested in..." message. That's not generated by some creepy guy sitting in a backroom watching your every move. Those are generated from algorithms that are based upon what you've liked, what you've bought, and how long you've looked at it.

And big data is about way more than just discounts.

From business to the environment to education, big data offers exciting possibilities. Even the boys in blue will benefit. Data scientists are working with police departments to develop crime prediction algorithms to prevent crimes like burglaries which, when they happen, tend to be followed by more burglaries soon afterward in the same area. The algorithm will pin point where and when more burglaries are likely to occur so cops can disrupt them before they even take place.

Big data could also help power companies and their customers conserve energy. For example it might send a message from a malfunctioning meter to the power company so it goes out and repairs it. Or maybe you get an app on your phone that tells you when you're wasting too much energy, like "you should really close that fridge door already."

Kids in school could benefit from big data which could track their grades to such a subtle degree, they could detect when a kid is having trouble before a teacher can even notice, letting the teacher step in and help the kid succeed.

Although big data is really exciting, I have to admit it's a little scary too. I mean, do we really want a judicial system that's based on computer algorithms? Where prosecutors and police look not for probable cause, but as one expert put it, for probabilistic cause. The cops could come in and bust you for a crime you would have committed. Ya'know, Minority Report style.

One estimate sets the amount of data that's just floating around out there by 2020, to be 100 zettabytes. Which is about 107 BILLION terabytes!

That's a lot of cat videos.