The biggest contribution of big data is merely its concept of its “big”. Thanks to the development of computers and statistics analysis, we are able to deal with the huge amount of data. As a result, companies are continuously gathering data from our daily movement.
In fact, if we install a lot of data recorders around the computer, we can gather hundreds of gigabyte one day. For example, we can record the facial expression when we are surfing the internet. We can keep track of our movement of the mouse. If we wear a lot of medical recorder, we can gather “big” data every second.
Therefore, the quantity of the big data is only determined by the numbers of recorders and the ability of the recorders. With the development of wearable technology, we can have a huge amount of data every second.
Although the big data is big, it can not some basic questions. For example, the big data can not tell the history of human beings. People who are poor can contribute 20 dollars to charity but do not want to spend the money on their lunch. People who are rich would like to buy a 10 million car but avoid contributing money to the charity. The big data can not explain the human factors in human beings. The data itself has no meaning. The way we interpret it matters.
Moreover, people would argue that we can monitor the resource of all the money to figure out the human factors. Of course we can. However, Don’t you feel we are living in a jail full of monitors under the concept of “big data”.