If you are not in to big data, you are out; so far the latest tech hype. Have we finally found a direction in the “databoulemic” society we have become? Any click on the web is collected with care and devotion, our mobile phone keeps track of every place we have been, our smart watch is “watching” our biometric data,… the list is not only endless but continues to grow everyday.
And now we have collected all this data… so what? Is it only a question of technology to create value from these data? Geeks might believe so… we don’t. Every time technology is put above the needs, which it is meant to serve, the probability we get lost is high if not inevitably. I guess it must feel safe to keep the big data debate only technological. 🙂
As far as I understand it and that’s a pure personal view on the issue, the value of Big Data is human based not technology based. Who cares about big data when there are only data? If Big Data has to provide value and thus make sense, you will need the human oriented competences to create it and these competences are go beyond technology.
The only way to create new value from these endless data is to make (produce) sense. As far as I know only human beings can decide about meaning and sense. Technology should remain an executer and be kept away from this process. Human oriented competences such as social, anthropological and psychological insights will allow you to create sense from these data.
Within the same framework one should not forget the relativity of the captured data. There is no such thing as capturing the complete reality. The data captured are a result of a concept or an idea of how we think the world is. In this sense the capturing of data is a result of a human decision and thus again a creation process of meaning, which is to often hidden or taken for granted.
In conclusion, Big Data is above all a big challenge of creating meaning and the technology will not ease the pain of that challenge.
