Last updated on March 1st, 2021 at 08:44 am
Big data has created and is continuing to create a lot of buzz in not only the technology arena but across the globe. It promises big changes, big interventions, big innovations, big integration with and within our daily lives. But how big is Big Data? now that is a question which can be answered with different connotations. How big is big? it is always relative to whom the question is being asked. For example, a big book of hundred pages will look humungous to a child, but present the same book to an adult who loves to read, they will be able to process it in a matter of hours. Now present shocking data statistics like close to 7.5 billion searches on Google, gazillion tweets, more than 40% of the world photographs stored on the internet. Is this information big enough for a data scientist to process for insights, not really, but is it big? of course yes, it is colossal. This is Big Data, not only the accumulation of data, that is the easy part. But processing it for insights, understanding trends, searching titbits within it, knowing what it says, is the tricky part. And if managed with excellence, it can change the world around us.
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Industries across verticals are researching methods to create sophisticated methods of analysing and decoding the data, to accurately understand what it is saying, and are developing methods of using this information to enhance business prospects.
This blog puts together some positive impacts of using Big Data Insights, which are going to change the world we live in. Not all the suggested changes will be immediate, some might happen in the immediate future, while others might be gradual, and some might be impacting our current lives as we read this blog.
Healthcare
There is a possibility that in the near future all patient history can be stored on a consolidated mainframe. The advantage is that not only a unique entry can be identified by any doctor, but on putting certain symptoms, your doctor will be able to see every patient in the world who has experienced those symptoms, and their response to treatments. Imagine the benefit it will present in terms of early detection of a disease and its prevention. The medical fraternity is aware of the advantages of Big Data and is ensuring they hop on the bus.
Security Applications
Big Data are being developed, like a pedometer application, that helps identify people on the way they walk, based on their pace. What is promising is that this application is so far in the testing phase and is a 100% accurate. So imagine a time you walk into an ATM and you do not need to enter your password simply because the machine recognises you by your walk. Or another application called ‘Pindrop’, which helps identify the person and location of the caller, by recognising the background sounds.
Facial recognition is another feature of Big data, which is getting better at processing. The capabilities of the machine to pick up our unique features like speech, movements, tonality and marry it with security features is possible, and we might very well enter a phase where forgery with signatures could be extinct.
Decoding the Consumer
With the rise of e-commerce websites, and the onset of all devices connected to the internet, which capture consumer patterns, possibilities in understanding the consumer and their behavioural patterns is on the rise. Companies recognise the value in accurately predicting and influencing consumer behaviour, as it could swing the profit tables upwards. Over a period of time companies will be able to identify not only a group of people based on demographics, but also individual patterns, and will then be able to not only cater to a group but to customize individual products as well, such information can also be used in other areas, like influencing the voter mindset specifically for a family at the time of Elections.
From Urban planning to presenting you with the piece of news you would like to read in the morning, Big Data, its impact and its effect can be felt around us. While it could be fashionable to think and mull over this intervention as an invasion to our privacy, the other bright side to the coin is to consider how the collection and analysis of data can make our lives easier.
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