Mainstream Big Data Articles
A few interesting articles came out today from mainstream sources such as The Economist, Forbes, and MIT’s Technology Review.
IBM is ratcheting up their big data PR push with a splashy $100 million investment in the field. While that $100 million will cover both basic R&D and system development, it remains to be seen whether IBM can successfully create enterprise-class products that actually add business value instead of useless features that sound good to technology executives, a la Rational Suite, WebSphere, and RAD. Surprisingly though, the time frame for practical Watson big data applications such as a medical assistant is a long-term 5-8 year time horizon, indicating Watson technology is not ready for prime time just yet.
Link: IBM’s Watson Now A Second Year Med Student (Forbes)
The Economist has an interesting fact-laden article on the data revolution. For example, there 4 billion people have mobile phones and 12% of them (480 million) are smartphone users. Much of The Economist’s article is based on McKinsey’s recent big data report.
Link: Building with Big Data (The Economist)
MIT’s Technology Review has an article on why big data needs a code of the ethics, a topic few people consider because they do not understand the vast amount of data being collected about them.
Link: What Big Data Needs: A Code of Ethical Practices (Technology Review)