computing capacity for other companies to be able to
process their big data applications.
Kemp says ultimately big data will give consumers
better tools so they can do a better job of predicting
things like prices, such as whether an airfare is likely
to go up or down. Farmers can do a better job of
insuring their crops if they can forecast the weather
with greater accuracy.
Oren Etzioni, a professor of computer science at the
University of Washington, says this trend is fueling
intense demand for mathematics and computing
talent.
"We have seen the industrial revolution, and we are
witnessing a data revolution," Etzioni says.
He has started three bigdata
companies. One of
them, Decide.com, employs four Ph.D.s to design
better programs to forecast prices on consumer
electronics.
Etzioni says a good data scientist can write
algorithms that filter data, understand what they're
telling you, and then graphically represent the
information. The end result is like getting a bird'seye
view of a vast territory of information.
Big data can, and occasionally does, go wrong. Comic
examples of that include mismatched
recommendations, like "My TiVo thinks I'm gay."
But think about a company divulging your Websurfing
history with your name attached, and you
begin to get a sense of how big data opens the door
to new possibilities of security or privacy breaches.