10 November 2013 - big data 1

Why did “big data” come up now in particular? Well, in the last decade processor speed leveled off, but the exponential improvements in data storage capacity and transmission rate continued. So we kept on growing our data volume but we could no longer handle it with one computer, and the resulting painful rethink of how to do data analysis called for a painful new buzzword.

Looking at headroom, the next curve to level off should be the data transmission rate. The buzzword will become something dull like “old data” and we’ll have to do actual work to snow our bosses again.