28 march 2010, data, data everywhere...

Monday 29th March 2010

Drove to Luton airport today, taking a ticket from the machine as we glided through the car park barrier. Astounded that the ticket had our car’s registration printed on it, I walked back to discover a camera, that in a split second had “captured”, processed and presented this data. Wal-mart captures more than 1 million customer transactions every hour; facebook has more than 40 billion photos; in 2003 it took ten years to analyse the 3 billion bits of data it took to unlock the human genome – the same can now be done in one week. Today, it is not getting hold of but managing and analysing data that is all important – the real skill is to understand it and provide an accessible narrative. Crucial in any big business of the future is the CIO – chief information officer, the key to the problems of “big data”. I want one.