Introduction
What is the future of data going to look like? Where are we going? We see in the news that data is taking over our lives and it is everywhere, but what does the future hold for us in the world of data? Well, that is what Tiago Santos talks about in his TED talk(the talk can be found here). He explains the past present and future of data and what he thinks will happen.
Summary of Article
The talk first starts with the past of data. Data has been used for thousands of years – all the way back to when the Egyptians built the pyramids. He then gets into some basic vocab such as business intelligence(using data to help make decisions), data mining(looking for correlations between variables to make some decisions), and augmented intelligence(using ML, AI, and analytics to extract information more quickly). Then he transitions to the present and how data is being used right now. Data is everywhere! It is in every sector of business. Data isn’t just limited to business, it is also in other industries such as sports as well as mobility(smart cities and logistics). The last part of the talk is focused on the future of data. Santos thinks it will be determined by the 5 Vs of data – Volume(the amount of data we use), Value(the information that it is giving us and how useful that information is to us), variety(the different forms data comes in), velocity(how fast the data is coming in), and veracity(the accuracy of the data). He mentions that this is just a prediction and he specifically uses the phrase “We use data to predict the future but the future of data is unpredictable” to hammer this point home. Another thing that he mentions is how in the future businesses will go from being data-driven to data-obsessed. This is the point where they have so much data they don’t know what to do with it and it is no longer serving a useful purpose and businesses are just collecting data for the sake of collecting it. He also mentions that the limits of data. He ends with the conclusion that humans will always be in control of data.
My Take
Overall, I liked this article. It was informative and the speaker did a really good job of keeping the reader engaged. Also, I liked how the story flowed and how he started with the past of data then transitioned to the present, and finally ended with the future. This showed a good progression of data and its life throughout the years. The speaker also did a really good job of explaining all the terms and giving definitions for them while speaking to ensure that everyone understood the technical terms that he was using. This talk introduced me to some new concepts such as augmented intelligence which was very fascinating and I will be sure to continue to explore. This talk was also really relieving because his conclusions assured us that humans would always be in control and with the narrative that is going on right now those are good words to hear. In conclusion, it was a good talk that was informative and done very well.
Conclusion
All in all, this was a good article. It was informative and flowed well. It is also spoken and delivered very well. I highly recommend you check it out when you get the chance(the link can be found here).