This Ted Talk is a quick watch – but I think it misses an important item, at least from a "data guy" perspective.
The talk opens talking about your Big Data legacy and immediately moves to social media and how all of those videos, all of that status update work you do, all of that online writing – it all adds up to immortality. I thought it was a really cool way to look at it. It’s really true as well – our legacies are moving online – and much more long-lived.
I think you see this in an easily relatable way with services like Ancestry.com. Essentially this is crowd-sourcing big data analysis. Think about all of the newspaper clippings that get scanned, all of the pictures looked over, and so much other information from census data to handwritten accounts of events. Talk about multi-source big-data.
The thing is though – this only has to be done once. Trace your routes, do the work, generations forever won’t have to – they’ll just be adding their piece to the model that’s already out there. It’s an amazingly huge change in how we will learn our genealogy going forward. It relates pretty directly too to the Ted talk.
All of that big data we really are collecting out there – the stuff we’re all too much of a pack rat to get rid of – is going to live on as a digital picture and footprint of the things we do. Your writing, tweets and so-on all add up and represent your identity – and it’s the identity that will endure.
So, what’s this all got to do with us as data folk? Think about the data you store and how the use and value of that data changes over time. Just when you think you know what to do with it all, it changes. Surely some data will gain in value over time – and some will lose value. Some will also change in use. How will you use a more comprehensive view of your customers? Right now we have really only just begun to work with more "business intelligence" – what will be possible (creepy or otherwise) as our knowledge rounds out?
As a final look at this, and the possible application direction of that knowledge of life, take a look at this short on the future of Google Glass. Combining this "transactional" look at relationship and personal data shows just how far the digital tattoo may, and let’s face it, is likely to go.