I struggle with the concept of BIG.
It’s not just that things can be big; it is understanding just how big big is!
For instance how big is one of those blades you see on today’s modern windmills that seem to appear on every hillside these days?
Or
How big is the continent of Africa compared to the rest of the world?
Or
How big is the search area for the missing Malaysian plane?
The answer to all of the above questions is “wow that's BIG”.
Or to be more specific:
- Modern windmill blades can the length of a football (Soccer) pitch. 100 Meters.
http://www.windustry.org/resources/how-big-are-wind-turbines
- You could fit all of the most powerful counties in the world in to Africa (the United States, China, India, Europe, Japan). Most maps aren’t to scale
http://worldwidenate.com/how-many-countries-can-fit-inside-of-africa/
- An area of 2.24million square nautical miles (7.68m square kilometers), in to which you could fit1.98 BILLION Boeing 777-200’s.
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2014/mar/18/just-how-big-is-the-search-area-for-mh370
But they are not all the same size, the magnitude of bigness differs tremendously in each question, and also if compared to something bigger they can all be made to look small.
So when the experts, consultant and analysts predict the onset of the phenomena that is called Big Data, I wonder how Big is Big?
Google’s Eric Schmidt claims that every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003 (Source)
Its like everything your education was based on gets doubled every other day!
And
48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, resulting in nearly 8 years of content every day(Source)
So finding the good stuff is only going to get harder
And
It was predicted that the world’s digital data would reach 2.7 zettabytes by the end of 2012. And that growth rates could be up to 80%.
That's 27 with 21 0’s after it!!!
Some people are even suggesting that the Internet is running out of space!
NO MORE ROOM: Internet is running out of space and we must cut down on downloads: http://www.dailystar.co.uk/tech/373792/NO-MORE-ROOM-Internet-is-running-out-of-space-and-we-must-cut...
So how big is big?
Well given that Big Data is not a choice but an overwhelming tidal wave that is engulfing us all, maybe the question should be;
How do we manage, leverage and embrace Data that is bigger that we can imagine?
For more information on the tools that can help visit:
