Remember hearing about cloud computing for the first time? Initially, I didn't have a clue what those two words meant. Neither does Amy Poehler:
But now it is completely familiar to me. I know it's the virtual space where the songs, photos, videos, e-mails and games from my iPhone, iPad and MacBook Pro are backed up.
Since nothing changes as fast as technology, I had to learn a new term: Big Data.
I leave it to the smart folks at IBM to explain the concept:
Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. This data comes from everywhere: sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos, purchase transaction records, and cell phone GPS signals to name a few. This data is big data.Another article explains how Big Data comes to be, well, Big Data:
We are... not limited here to text data; big data can include video, audio, and images too...In a month, a teen will text, on average, 4,732 times. In a day, two billion YouTube videos are watched and four billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook—about half of those pieces by [just] a couple [of people} alone...What is the relevance to those of us who work in the mental health/EAP fields? We can expect that in the next few years Big Data methodologies will be used, on a grand scale, to analyze admissions to rehab facilities, relationships between medications prescribed and diagnoses, and all kinds of data that I can barely wrap my mind around.
From all of this analysis will come recommendations for new treatments, new drugs, and countless other changes.
Care to learn more? There is now a peer-reviewed journal called Big Data.
The first issue is free.
No comments:
Post a Comment