Big Data, Google AdWords & Planet Earth

A Tweet came flying past my window this morning claiming that over the next two years we will see more data being generated than was created in the last 20 years. The statement was attributed to Darren Thomas who is VP & GM of the Dell Enterprise Storage Group.

So for some bizarre reason I decided to put two and two together and make six and start Googling the term "Big Data".

Big Data as a term seems to be somewhere in the ether right now, it's certainly not a de facto term and it has not even been hijacked by some database management system vendor who wants to talk about data management and integration.

So as the scale of data and computations becomes ever larger and we plunge forward into an ever deeper binary abyss, what do we need to think about?

Well firstly, if Microsoft wants to democratise application lifecycle management (as they said in this ZDNetUK interview link) then surely there should be a democratic exchange of data around the globe right?

Well, there should be, but if you look at the "ownership" that Google has over this particular carbon-based life form filled planet's data, then you might just feel that Google AdWords is not very democratic.

Perhaps the biggest alert that we should all take heed of is the changing face of analytical data in terms of the way new media start ups appear to be handling it. What I mean is, if you consider web 2.0-generation newbies such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and others.

These companies started out as social networking mavericks that were not particularly focused on aggregating and analysing the data throughput that their users generated. But as their business models developed they learnt to monetise themselves, then the organisations themselves became more analytical with their data. In turn, this Metadata then feeds back into the ecological pool of data life and the planet continues to multiply and coexist.

Anyway, enough ramblings, I thought there was an interesting term to be explored here and a potential impact to be felt on technology professionals in general if all my (admittedly slightly wooly) arguments do actually hold water.