Big Data Launches "Fast Track" In China And Ushers In A New Era

"Big data has become the biggest thing". Recently, the US government announced a new version of big data research plan. Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy of the White House Holdren said in a speech that he had predicted that big data would be a "big event" in 2012. Now it is conservative.

Back in June, Snowden's 41 slides made the US big data monitoring project "prism" come to the surface, making people shudder.

2013 was called "the first year of big data" by some experts. Optimism and anxiety about the era of big data were fully demonstrated in this year.

　　 Great changes

　　IDC( International data The company) estimated that the total amount of data generated in the world in 2012 was about 2.8 zebytes. Some people calculate that this is equivalent to more than 300 billion high-definition movies with a duration of two hours, which can not be seen for more than 70 million years.

And this is just the prelude. More waves are behind us.

IDC predicts that in the next few years, the global data volume will double every two years, reaching 40 zebytes by 2020.

Big data is an important driving force for this great change and will become a new key resource for promoting economic and social transformation. Collecting, analyzing and applying the huge data of exponential growth will stimulate innovation, provide new development opportunities for all walks of life, and bring changes to people's daily lives.

The "big data coffee cup" that Starbucks intends to launch is a small example. The US media reported that the coffee chain giant intends to test installing sensors in some coffee cups to collect data such as regular customers' coffee drinking speed, so as to provide customers who drink coffee slowly with cups with good thermal insulation effect and improve their satisfaction and loyalty.

Industry insiders believe that the essence of big data is not "big", but to analyze massive data with new thinking and technology, reveal hidden human behavior and other patterns, thereby creating new products and services, or predicting future trends.

Big data is a new kind of values and methodology. People are no longer facing random samples but all data, not accuracy but hybridity, not causality but correlation. "The existing cognition and system are based on scarce data, and people's thinking and working methods must be changed to adapt to the arrival of the big data era." Schoenberg wrote in his book.

　　 Big competition

Big data is regarded as the next frontier of innovation and productivity improvement, is becoming one of the elements of national competitiveness, and is increasingly valued worldwide. Many governments have increased their support for big data development, even to the height of national strategies. In 2013, international competition around big data continued to increase.

According to the research of Experian Group, a consulting company, the global total investment in big data projects reached 4.5 billion euros (about 6 billion dollars) in 2012, and is expected to maintain a growth rate of about 40% in 2013 and 2014.

In the United States, big data has become a key project from a hot word. In March 2012, the US government announced the US $200 million Big Data Research and Development Plan. In November 2013, it again announced a number of big data research projects involving governments at all levels, private enterprises and scientific research institutions. The National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation of the United States are all involved, and some critics call it the version 2.0 of the big data strategy of the United States.

In the UK, despite the economic downturn and fiscal contraction, the government still spends a lot of money on big data. At the beginning of 2013, the UK Department of Commerce, Innovation and Skills announced that it would invest 800 million pounds to develop eight types of high-tech, including 189 million pounds (about 300 million dollars) for big data projects.

Big data has also started to enter the "fast lane" in China, and the government, enterprises and scientific research institutions are in a multi-dimensional layout. The 12th Five Year Development Plan of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China regards information processing technology as one of the four key innovative technology projects, including massive data storage, data mining, etc. With the issuance of 4G licenses at the end of 2013, faster networks will bring greater data flow and strategic resources for governments and enterprises.

　　 Big challenge

"Prism" was exposed in 2013, showing people how to protect the country in the era of big data information safety . The severe challenge of protecting personal privacy. The "Prism Gate" has made governments realize the importance of "data sovereignty" and the consequences of relying on individual countries for network and telecommunications core technologies. It has become the consensus of some countries that independent innovation must be accelerated to protect "data sovereignty".

The research published in British magazine in March 2013 found that only four time points and location data can determine a person's identity, with an accuracy rate of 95%. This shows that big data is enough to "depict" a person clearly, and the protection of personal privacy by existing legal means and core technologies is gradually becoming ineffective.

How to big data It is also a test for countries and individuals to remain sober and rational, innovate and create in the coming attack.

Experts pointed out that big data is expected to play an important role in China's economic transformation and upgrading. The huge population base, economic volume and demand mean that China has unique advantages in developing big data. However, it should also be noted that big data has the characteristics of low value density and high technical requirements such as mining and analysis. China should not only be satisfied with being a "world data center", but should prevent concept hype, strengthen independent innovation, carry out forward-looking institutional design and other layout, and follow the trend to turn "created in China" from opportunities into reality.

We should also be alert to the tendency of "superstition" in big data, and recognize the possible defects and deficiencies of big data analysis. Psychologists believe that the model created by big data will bind people to the options provided by the algorithm, and excessive reliance on big data analysis may also constrain innovation. American Internet activist Pariser called it "Internet Bubble": although Internet personalization brings convenience, it limits people to the "bubble" of their past behavior patterns, unable to touch the endless possibilities brought by massive information.

Big data experts like to describe the inevitability of big data analysis with Shakespeare's "All the past is prelude", but big data provides only reference answers rather than final answers. No matter in the era of small data or big data, the spirit of exploration and innovation should not be abandoned. As Lincoln said, "the best way to predict the future is to create the future".