Today we had a kind of a team building day at my current project. It was at "De gasfabriek" in Deventer, near my hometown. The day was called 'Learning day' because of the fact our management wanted us to think about the future of out teams and new technology which might be needed to get to that future.
Big data
The day started with a so called 'Energizer' , it was a presentation about data and the more important it is going to be now and in the future.
It was a very interesting presentation which showed multiple applicances of data which lead to great solutions. For instance in healthcare. By collecting a lot of data about certain diseases it is possible to prescribe a receipe for a disease or even bigger, to translate the sympthoms to a particular disease multiple times faster then any doctor.. That's sound amazing by scary at the same time.
Another example was the site Planet.com, this site ( or the technology behind it) makes pictures of the entire earth each day. So you can imagine the amount of data that will be. With all that (visual) data you can see changes in environment, city's or even parts of the world. It can be used to adjust measures for the environment, but it also can show the impact of building houses and new city's. Again I do have doubts... what if this data is used (which I guess it already is) for the wrong purposes.... It's more easy to find targets in case of a war... On the other hand I do think different governments already has these kinds of techniques.
The working of a Tesla car is also all about data and machine learning. A Tesla can drive itself with the autopilot. What it actually does is gather all data about the things around the car and participate on it. It recognize objects (people, cars, signs and all sorts of things) and adjusts the cars behaviour around it.
Another project of Elan Musk (the founder of Tesla) is project Starlink. With this project Elan wants to send 42.000 satelites in space which will form a broad network of 5G internet, it will cover the whole world...yes...the whole world.
He already has a license to send 12.000 satelites in to space and he asked another license for 30.000. Starlink will be, if it all goes well, the first and only network with a worldwide coverage, wherever you are. now that sounds pretty cool but again in my opinion a bit scary because of the fact Starlink would almost own the whole internet (by data that is) and all data is going trough this network... On the other hand, it will bring a lot of oppertunities to area's where internet isn't available at this moment...
Data is all around us and is seen as the new gold. Companies are gathering public data and enrich it with data of there own to make money out of it.
Another data goldmine are apps like WeChat, it's a chines app which originally was founded to chat and instant messaging. Soon it evolved to a multipurpose app in which you can order food, buy clothes, order a taxi and so on.... All this data is used to bring you a personal experience of using the app.. Personalized ad's, offers and so on...
Data is also used to influence people, with politics for example. Companies collecting a lot of data about people. When the are able (and they are) to get to know the habbits of some districts of preferences or political statements of parts of a country, the can formulate questions which can (because the question fit's right into their alley) influence them without even knowing it... This is a common way in the political world....frightning isn't it...
I learned a lot about data and it's danger and oppertunities.. 'They' know more about us then we would like I guess...
Do you think data is the new gold...??
I will talk about some more topics in a later posts..
Have a great night,
Peter
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