I work with Big data, I do not work with ITER. But both appear to suffer from the same condition, they both promise great benefits in the future.
Age does provide some benefits, with perspective being one of them. For the last (well as long as it's been thought about), un-teen years, the promise of harnessing fusion reaction as an energy source has always been 20 years out. If we just put our minds to it, we can have it done in about 20 years. Well, we have been putting our minds to it and it's still 20+ years in the future. By putting our minds "to it" means, a great number of countries have pledged people and resources to the ITER project that is currently being built in France (starting in 2007). It's budget is now grown 3x times (16b) and the end is not in sight.
The hope, the promise, the future is always just out there, but not yet in our grasp. It appears that harnessing fusion is way way harder than just creating un-controlled fusion.
On to Big Data.
In the IT world, we can now collect (and have been collecting) big data. The capacity and low cost is there and the software (Hadoop, ElasticSearch, etc) now exists for accessing and processing it in a timely fashion.
Life is good. Except, collecting data is not the same as harnessing and controlling it.
The expectation is that once you have all of this data, you can mine it for valuable information that you can 1) sell, 2) make your existing product / service better or 3) something new. Ah, the promise of what the future will provide. I'm waiting.....
At least with ITER there are 1) blueprints, 2) physics and 3) specific goals in place (even if it's all very bleeding edge stuff). With big data, it's still all very mushy as to what you can do with it and how it should work with your existing data set. It's all very much up in the air. Just having a huge amount of data and some tools does not a solution make.
Collecting large amounts of data can work for targeted issues as long as the collected data is relevent and the methodologies are known for that domain. But this is not what is being sold. The storage and tools are being sold with no insight on what the solution is. There is even a push that garbage data will be irrelavent as it will be drowned out by the patterns that arise. Except when the patterns are the garage data (think Google Flu).
Big data may be the future, but we live in the here and now and solutions need to be delivered today.
Age does provide some benefits, with perspective being one of them. For the last (well as long as it's been thought about), un-teen years, the promise of harnessing fusion reaction as an energy source has always been 20 years out. If we just put our minds to it, we can have it done in about 20 years. Well, we have been putting our minds to it and it's still 20+ years in the future. By putting our minds "to it" means, a great number of countries have pledged people and resources to the ITER project that is currently being built in France (starting in 2007). It's budget is now grown 3x times (16b) and the end is not in sight. The hope, the promise, the future is always just out there, but not yet in our grasp. It appears that harnessing fusion is way way harder than just creating un-controlled fusion.
On to Big Data.
In the IT world, we can now collect (and have been collecting) big data. The capacity and low cost is there and the software (Hadoop, ElasticSearch, etc) now exists for accessing and processing it in a timely fashion.
Life is good. Except, collecting data is not the same as harnessing and controlling it.
The expectation is that once you have all of this data, you can mine it for valuable information that you can 1) sell, 2) make your existing product / service better or 3) something new. Ah, the promise of what the future will provide. I'm waiting.....
At least with ITER there are 1) blueprints, 2) physics and 3) specific goals in place (even if it's all very bleeding edge stuff). With big data, it's still all very mushy as to what you can do with it and how it should work with your existing data set. It's all very much up in the air. Just having a huge amount of data and some tools does not a solution make.
Collecting large amounts of data can work for targeted issues as long as the collected data is relevent and the methodologies are known for that domain. But this is not what is being sold. The storage and tools are being sold with no insight on what the solution is. There is even a push that garbage data will be irrelavent as it will be drowned out by the patterns that arise. Except when the patterns are the garage data (think Google Flu).
Big data may be the future, but we live in the here and now and solutions need to be delivered today.
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