If there are two things in life for which people feel special fascination are numbers, and the ability to predict the future. Well, some would have said that money and free time, in which case would be a pretty valid point of view too.
What both issues are about is of paramount importance for the survival of us as a species, in the first place, and, on the other hand, for the maintenance of the current state of things, of the system in which "we are, we live and move " It is, simply, the reduction of uncertainty, of the need to know.
From long before the computer age existed, there were also data centers, where an important part of the knowledge of humanity was gathered. The Library of Alexandria and that of Ephesus are examples of this. Each ancient civilization also had its means to anticipate future events.
The oracle of Delphi, Nostradamus, the priests of ancient Egypt, Edgar Cayce, Parravicini, astrologers, magicians, mediums and seers of all ages were in charge of predicting the result of wars, invasions, troubles, and businesses of their kings, sultans and emperors; in our days, of presidents, ministers, stars of the show, businessmen, or simply warned, who would listen, about the following tragedies or phenomena that would hit the world.
It is said that even Ronald Reagan had his personal astrologer, Joan Quigley, whom he consulted while he was the highest ranking tenant in the White House.
In the image below you can see Benjamín Solari Parravicini, a renowned Argentine clairvoyant.
Speaking of oracles, the name of one of the most important companies, and pioneer, of the database sector is precisely that: Oracle.
Question of figures
With the passage of time, naturally, we had more and more data to process. In the modern era the DBMS, or database administration systems, appeared, then came SQL, a language that allows the query of the same, and other derived codes.
Technological companies have continued to develop the necessary tools to deal with the enormous amounts of information that need to be classified and studied.Currently 90% of the database sector is shared between Oracle, Microsoft, IBM, SAP and Amazon Web Services.
Globalization, the Internet and 24/7 employment of information technologies are producing surprising amounts of data at every moment. It is estimated that there are currently some 23 billion connected devices worldwide, of which approximately 2.53 billion are smart phones , and 1.32 billion are tablets , according to Statista data.
Internet users amount to 3.8 billion. Not bad, considering that "barely" we are 7.613 million inhabitants on the planet.
In early 2014, cell phones and tablets loaded and downloaded about 2 exabytes (1 exabyte = 1 billion gigabytes) of data. At the beginning of 2017, data created on mobile devices soared to more than 8 exabytes per month.
In 60 seconds
The following figures reveal that in a minute millions of things can happen, especially when it comes to what happens on the Internet:
An average of 840 people open their profile on social networks.
Twitter records approximately 481,000 tweets.
On YouTube, users access 4.3 million videos.
Approximately 650,000 posts are posted, 510,000 comments, 293,000 states are updated and 136,000 photos are uploaded to Facebook.
In Google, 3,607,080 searches are carried out.
WhatsApp records 38 million messages.
On Instagram 174,000 people are looking at photos.
Amazon sells more than 600 products and bills over $ 222,000.
In Tinder some 972,222 profiles are reviewed.
Some 375,000 applications are downloaded from Apple and Google stores.
Source
Internet of things (IoT)
The so-called Internet of Things was an idea proposed by Kevin Ashton in 1999, and deals with the digital interconnection of everyday objects, with each other and with the Internet. If objects of daily life had radio labels incorporated, they could be identified and managed by other equipment, in the same way as if they were by human beings.
For example, if books, thermostats, refrigerators, parcels, lamps, first-aid kits, automotive parts, among others, were connected to the Internet and equipped with identification devices, such as the aforementioned labels, there would not be, theoretically, items out of stock or expired medicines; we would know where each thing is, how they are consumed in the world; Losses would be almost non-existent and we would know what is on or off at all times.
Of course, all of that, at first glance, sounds very good. That is, thanks to the IoT we can know, exactly, what is the actual life time that is left to a piece of an aircraft turbine is frankly excellent.
But there is the other Internet of Things, where those things, apparently, are ourselves. It is such a great idea, and one that has worked so wonderfully, that it is the objects themselves that voluntarily acquire, but not gratuitously, the radio label that will give them away from that moment on. I mean, ladies and gentlemen, to your omnipotent, ubiquitous, always online, and expensive mobile device.
We have already seen the scale in which the mass use of smartphones and tablets is found, and the projections are more than encouraging. By the year 2020 will be circulating, properly connected, some 2.87 billion smartphones around the world.
Thanks to the inclement bombardment of media and advertising fortunes that manufacturers spend, the pressure to acquire a mobile device, or to renew it frequently, can become overwhelming.
And what happens with the data generated by the users? Every time you turn it on, or turn it off, (IoT, my friends), the device (or its owner) reports where it is located ("we need to know your location to continue with ..."), what applications it uses, how much time, what he was doing when he used the application, how many contacts he has, the tone of his voice (yes, his voice is recorded, and at some point it can be used to identify him), and the list goes on.
Advances in technology are undoubtedly a good thing. It is true that they make the lives of millions of people easier every day, and they will continue to do so, but we are being converted into subjects of consumption, paying, in addition, for it.
Because with the data that comes from these luxurious mobile devices, our consumer profile is being assembled daily, the Holy Grail of planetary marketing , the modern crystal ball that discovers our future movements, likes and dislikes, to finally end up being part of that incalculable mass of information with which Big Brother is fed, the true intelligence hidden among the thousands, or millions, of exabytes of an unknown digital universe.