# trends | Big data

"The one who owns the information, owns the world." It seems that this phrase has never sounded as true as it is today. In the second decade of the 21st century, information has become not only raw materials, tools and weapons, but also the most important asset for which corporations and governments are fighting. We’ll talk about this today.

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In today's business environment, data managementis a critical indicator of the success of an enterprise. Many companies have begun to recognize the importance of information skills. Today, the so-called "big data" is the most important trend that extends to the most diverse areas of business and technology.

The term "Big data" is used.to indicate initiatives and technologies that include diverse and rapidly growing assets of these various categories. The variety of this information complicates their processing, and those who manage to do this for the benefit of their business are today successful.

Big Data involves creating large volumescomplex data, their storage, extraction and analysis. The Big Data discipline is based on the principle of three Vs - Volume (volume), Velocity (speed) and Variety (variety).

Volume. Twenty years ago a regular computer had a harddrive with an average capacity of 10 gigabytes. Today, social platforms such as Facebook process more than half a billion terabytes of data daily. Boeing aircraft generate hundreds of terabytes of flight data for a single flight. The widespread use of smartphones and tablets ensures the production of billions of terabytes of constantly updated information, which is as variegated and diverse as our world.

Speed. Internet click tracking systems every secondanalyze millions of web users. Changes in the state of trading on stock exchanges are updated within microseconds. Game servers can support the one-time connection of millions of users who perform many actions every second. These are just a few examples that show how frantically new data is being generated.

Manifold. The concept of "big data" does not applyonly letters and numbers: it includes audio, video, scattered text, data from social networks and much more. And where some see a giant dump of unnecessary information, others see an invaluable asset that can change the world.

The term Big Data was first introduced by the chapter.O’Reilly by Roger Mugalus back in 2005. However, the question of how to process the available data began to be asked a very long time ago. In fact, the first records of attempts to use data to manage the activities of enterprises are over 7,000 years old.

It was at that time that Mesopotamia began to leadaccounting for harvesting and raising livestock. Accounting principles continued to evolve and improve, and in 1663, demographer John Graunt began to record and analyze mortality rates in London. He did this so that the public appreciated the extent of the spread of bubonic plague in those days.

In his book Natural and Politicalobservations of the lists of the dead. ”Grant gave the world the first ever statistical analysis of data. The book has shed light on the main causes of death in 17th century England. Thanks to this work, Graunt became famous as a pioneer in statistics.

Since then, accounting principles have continuedto improve, but nothing extraordinary in this direction arose until the end of the 19th century announced the entry into the information era. A new era began in 1889 when Herman Hollerith invented a computer system for sorting census data.

The next notable leap occurred in 1937,when the president of the United States was Franklin Roosevelt. After the State Security Act was passed in Congress, the government was required to keep records of millions of Americans. As a result, the government asked IBM to develop a punch card reader system, which was designed to store huge amounts of data.

However, the first data processing machinethe Colossus system, which was developed by the British in 1943 to decipher Nazi codes during World War II, is considered to be. The machine searched for any patterns that regularly appeared in intercepted messages. The system worked at a record speed and was able to process 5000 characters per second, which allowed for a couple of hours to do the work that previously took weeks.

The first data center was established by the Americangovernment in 1965 and was intended to store millions of fingerprints and tax records. Records were recorded on magnetic tapes, which were systematized and stored in a special room. It is believed that this was the first electronic repository of information.

In 1989, a British specialist in computer scienceTim Berners-Lee invented the worldwide computer network with the goal of ensuring the exchange of information through a hypertext system. Then he could not even imagine what impact the world would have on his invention, which later became known as the Internet. After the beginning of the nineties, more and more devices began to connect to the global network, which means that the rate of data generation began to grow even more actively.

In 1995, the first supercomputer was created. This machine was able to do the job in seconds, which a simple person would take thousands of years. And then came the 21st century.

Here we turn again to 2005, whenRoger Mugalus coined the term "big data." In the same year, Yahoo created the now open Hadoop platform, whose goal was to index the entire Internet. Today, Hadoop is used by millions of enterprises to receive and process enormous amounts of data.

Over the past 10 years, social networks have been rapidlydeveloped, and the amount of information created by users grew daily. One after another, companies and governments began implementing Big Data projects. For example, in 2009, the Government of India created the largest database of biometric data, which stores fingerprints and scans of the irises of the eyes of all citizens of the country.

In 2010, Google CEO Eric Schmidt spoke atCalifornian Techonomy conference, saying that over the past seven years, the company has accumulated 5 exabytes of data. It was unlikely that he could have imagined that by 2017 a similar amount of information would be generated daily. At the same time, growth rates do not think to slow down.

A look into the past allowed us to make an approximatean idea of ​​what trends await us in the future. If two decades ago the enterprises that possessed information were the most successful, today those who are able to best interpret and use the available information have success. It is logical to expect that in the future, success will depend on the ability to force big data to help make the right strategic decisions.

Surely most of us at the mentionthe concept of "big data" in the head there is a huge room, crowded with many servers with flashing lights. But to understand that this is a really important phenomenon that has changed the rules of the game, it’s enough to turn to a few examples.

Recent US presidential elections have shownhow effective the use of the latest information technologies can be. While Hillary Clinton resorted to traditional methods and attracted celebrities to her headquarters, Donald Trump's team decided to focus on studying the preferences and consumer behavior of millions of Americans. Having received accurate data on what the electorate wants, the Republican candidate’s headquarters was able to more effectively respond to requests from active Internet users. As a result, Trump’s victory does not look so unexpected if you take into account how much and productive work has been done.

Or take, for example, the Netflix streaming service,which in recent years has become one of the most popular content producers. By delivering video materials to the audience, the company managed to accumulate a gigantic amount of statistical data, thoroughly studying the preferences of users: which stories they like, which actors they like, which scenes are reviewed several times, and which are skipped. As a result, every new Netflix series gets to the point and earns the highest ratings on IMDB. If you still think that the key to success lies in the talent of the show runners, then most likely you are too naive.

On a microscopic scale, big data canput at the service of your self-improvement. For example, your fitness bracelet or smartwatch can collect information about calories consumed, distance traveled, heart rate, and sleep statistics. The collection and analysis of such information will allow you to adjust your habits, which with proper patience will have a positive effect on your health and longevity.

By the way, and on a global scale big dataactively help medicine. Already now, processing the accumulated statistical data allows not only in a few minutes to diagnose various diseases with high accuracy, but also effectively predict their occurrence. This will have to protect people from the hidden threat and save millions of lives.

One vivid example of this is the platformResearchKit, which Apple launched in 2016. Through the use of mobile applications, medical professionals collect user health data. This allows not only to extend the care of patients outside the clinic and to ensure their speedy recovery, but also to accumulate the necessary data to increase the effectiveness of interaction with future patients.

Of course, big data is actively used andlaw enforcement agencies. For example, the US National Security Agency uses available data to detect and prevent terrorist activity. Corporations have long been using solutions in this area to prevent cyberattacks and unauthorized penetrations into systems. The police are also experimenting with Big Data, trying to determine the potential threat to the rule of law of a citizen based on information from public profiles.

It will be useful to recall the indicativethe history of 2014, when the Chicago police, using a computer system, compiled a list of 400 residents of the city who have all the prerequisites in order to break the law. The police visited these citizens and held preventive conversations with them, but the story made a lot of noise, primarily because of the unceremonious invasion of personal life. Although the project with the scandal was closed, there is no evidence that the computer analysis of potential criminal inclinations of citizens was discontinued.

Although the era of big data is still onthe initial stage, the achievements of this discipline are already actively used by both private corporations and governments. But the main thing is that this valuable asset should not be at the disposal of those who could use it to the detriment of humanity.

# trends | Neural networks