The symbol of diverging arrows above is said to represent chaos. I added the globe for sustainability and the dizzy green surround to represent big data in raw form.
Cutting and pasting are wondrous tools.
Or you may prefer something simpler:
The buzz around Big Data seems like the cloud a few years ago. Lots of opinions. Lots of confusion. Lots of promise. Lots of chaos. Only the beginning.
For cloud computing the chaos has abated. The definitions, viability and real potential has settled into mainstream IT and even consumer acceptance.
Big data still confuses. But we know that it's Big.
And it strikes me that there are a lot of parallels as we develop our understanding of the capabilities and inherent dangers of both cloud and big data. These range from the potential for greater efficiencies and better information at lower costs to security and privacy exposures.
Type "what is big data?" in the search engine and it generates 120M hits. ("What is cloud IT?" has it beat at nearly 1.7B.) And as you wander through the results the picture emerges of how big data may lead to better business, shorter drug development cycles, improvements in weather and climate knowledge. Big data harnessed from smart grids may deliver huge energy efficiency gains. It can create unique views of trends and, if not used carefully, lead to disastrous decisions.
Still, I think of big data as a way to make sense out of chaos. Look at all those diverse data sets, too large to fathom individually and then use big data analytics to look across the apparent chaos for beneficial connections, ideas and potential applications to a problem at hand.
Now, relate this to systems and systems thinking.
The formal study of Systems Thinking has been underway for a number of years. Don’t know to what extent it has been applied to cloud IT and big data but it certainly seems a good fit.
A system is an entity which maintains its existence
through the mutual interaction of its parts.The key emphasis here is one of "mutual interaction," in that something is occurring between the parts, over time, which maintains the system. A system is different than a heap or a collection, mostly.
Think about sustainability as a system. Not just the ecological or environmental system but the whole social, economic, environmental, political and aspirational system. Now apply big data analytics. (Others have thought about this. See the Interconnected World blog.)
A typical large system life-cycle is roughly fifty or sixty years. Toward the end of that period, significant events and changes are to be expected. Does Business Intelligence moving to big data analytics qualify?
IBM introduced the System/360 Mainframe in 1965. Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962 and the first Earth Day was April 22, 1970. So, if the modern computing and the awakening of a global green system both started in the early 60s, then we are on schedule for some breakout events – turning points. Like Big Data.
There is a confluence here. Smart cities. Climate change. Heightened environmental awareness. Bringing your own bags to the supermarket.
And it’s more than symbolism - we hope. Rio+20 starts this week. That's the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. The main conference is complimented by over 500 side events on international efforts to address global warming and sustainable development.
I don't see any sessions on the use of big data for sustainability but I bet it will emerge. And it shouldn't take long to see - chaos - big data - systems - sustainability.
Big Data and Sustainability ? You bet ! if we believe in Douglas Adam's theory (and somebody does more than others) that Earth is the biggest computer ever, then you must admit that there is where big data stay. Jokes apart (although I like to think about the earth as a big comnputing engine) there are so many things to compute, too many probes to check, too many events happening at the same time - I think we still have to crack that code but definitely is big data. Just think about oil rigs, earthquake's data, predictive weather behaviour, the more (data) you know about them the better off you are...sustainability, you're bound for some big data !
Posted by: maurizio | 06/22/2012 at 03:48 AM