Big Data
f you have read the book Money Ball (video option here) by Michael Lewis, then you have an understanding of the financial and emotional power that comes with Big Data.
However, you might also feel that if Paul Revere was riding his horse again in Boston, he would change his cry from "The British are coming" to "Big Data is coming." Privacy is over, big brother is here and individual freedoms are soon to be taken away!
This is a typical reaction from people when they first start to understand what all this big data means, or when they read about what the National Security Agency (NSA) in the USA is doing. In addition, commercial companies such as IBM, Apple and bunch of companies you have never heard of, are rapidly gathering data, running analytics and applying algorithms to Big Data and selling it.
On the other side, Big Data is doing fantastic things in the healthcare industry, education, transportation safety, sports and more! For example, Sal Khan and his Khan Academy program is able to generate zillions of data points to better understand how students learn. We can now, if we choose, customize learning like never before.