Data: Then and Now

In the next couple of posts, let's take a journey back to where many of us started and how we are coping with the explosive nature of data.

In the beginning of my adulthood…

We took copious notes by hand, we used rotary phones and we transacted business in-person and or by phone.  We grew roots where we were born or within a reasonable distance thereof.  Some of us trudged across the oceans and relied on operators for international calls.  These calls came in increments of three minutes for fourteen dollars and hinged on saying “continue please” to the operator at the right moments.  Seriously.  Corporations, academicians, and governments were beginning to invest in research and development of large-scale systems.  Computers were the size of wooly mammoths.

Fast forward to the present. 

Telephone operators, rotary phones, going places to do business are relics of a century gone by.  We call for pennies if not free.  Our kids respond better to text messages. We bank on the net, we stream movies on our iPads, we make friends and stay connected in the virtual space, we plan our trips and buy using our browsers.  The data context for businesses - corporations, scientists, health-care providers, defense industry and government -  is more interactive, more connected, and much larger in scope than before.  Computers look like pizza boxes and nanotechnology is in our vocabulary.

Spend a moment thinking of IBM’s ad strategy – Smarter Planet, Smarter Cities, Smarter everything.    

We are certainly multi-tasking more than previous generations but how are we "smarter" vis-à-vis data?