A\u00a0large portion of this week\u2019s blogposts will be dedicated to Big Data. For the last three years (roughly) it\u2019s been a new \u201cbig thing\u201d for the IT industry. The reason is clear: the technical possibility to sift through the gazillion bytes of assorted data discerning useful patterns that may grant a huge advantages over the competitors has emerged relatively recently. Now the Big Data topic is a much-hyped one, although multiple voices of doubt and reservations come in and grow in numbers.<\/p>\n
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Some readers of this blog may watch Person of Interest<\/em>. The third season of this criminal drama wrapped earlier this year, leaving its multiple of fans in great pain, craving for the next season\u2019s developments.\u00a0<\/p> Big Data has been the new \u201cbig thing\u201d for several\u00a0years, but more and more voices of doubt are\u00a0surfacing.<\/p>Tweet<\/a><\/blockquote>\n For those who haven\u2019t seen or heard of it, this is a story about a small and covert group of crime-fighters led by an ingenious programmer who, shaken by the events of 9\/11, had created a special system, a \u201cMachine\u201d in order to detect and prevent possible acts of terror. It does this by crunching very large amounts of data from omnipresent surveillance devices (CCTV, etc.) and the Web, in order to find anomalies that may lead to mass-casualty events. Soon it turns out that the Machine \u201csees everything \u2013 violent crimes involving ordinary people\u201d, and that it is \u2013\u00a0in fact \u2013 sentient on its own. It\u2019s not malicious, but the very knowledge of it puts a person in a great peril.<\/p>\n \n<\/p> From the CBS\u2019s \u2018Person of Interest\u2019 intro.<\/em><\/p>\n Well, that\u2019s a very superficial synopsis. This TV series actually covers a lot of actual and\/or popular topics: artificial intelligence, cyberweaponry (with Stuxnet explicitly mentioned at least a couple of times), mass surveillance, conspiracy, use and abuse of technology, and, of course, a dire plentitude of information available about each one of us. Also a recurring topic is the illusion of omnipotence that IT gives to humans, along with how rapidly it dissipates when it comes to facing the real heat, and how useless it may be next-to-unlimited access to petaloads of data when it comes down to being a human in a critical situation.\u00a0<\/p> Crunching petabytes of data in a reasonable time only recently became feasible.<\/p>Tweet<\/a><\/blockquote>\n Actually, in the real world there is an issue of such \u201cillusion of omnipotence\u201d regarding the IT, and it\u2019s directly related to the aforementioned TV series premise: the product of Big Data grinding provides its, well, handlers with not-so-subtle (if only tactical, though) business advantages. A lot of hype is generated over the last three years. But how big are these advantages and what\u2019s the price tag attached?<\/p>\n In the next few posts we will tell a few stories \u2013 not so big ones \u2013 related to Big Data. It is not intended to be an in-depth thesis, it\u2019s just a handful of facts to, let\u2019s say, meditate upon. Stay tuned!<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n