Big Data

We have no secrets anymore.

Our smart phones and computers have betrayed us.  What we watch, buy and communicate online has brought us to the ultimate “emperor has no clothes” reality of our lives today.  And actually, I’m sort of ok with that.

It’s true that our government has taken advantage of the information technology revolution to protect the Homeland by tracking our whims and whereabouts.  But while libertarians hate the fact that “big government” invades our privacy on a regular basis, they should really be worried about the tsumani coming our way due to the corporatization of Big Data.

Yup, Big Data has become Big Business – and companies are only now realizing what a gold mine they possess in terms of marketing behavior and consumer preference insights, sliced and diced in any way you want – by demographic, geographic, religious or cultural preference.  The promotion of goods, services, videos, anything and everything is coming to your email box or smart phone in greater and greater volume every day and that’s just the beginning.  Technologists are scrambling to keep up with the sheer velocity of this new marketing universe and the speed of light changes that characterize it, so that they can develop the tools you’ll absolute need and have to have in order to weed out the crap from the stuff you really want.

It’s why the ad/pr agency conglomerates Publicis and Omnicom are merging.  It’s why privacy advocates are up in arms.  It’s why Edward Snowden lives in Russia.

Big Data, baby. 

I’m sort of reminded of Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman (there’s a 60s cultural reference for you!) and his mantra, “What?  Me worry?”  All this Big Data will generate big money that hopefully will generate big jobs and products and services that keep the global economy humming enough so that my kid is employable 12 or so years from now.  And the Big Ideas that drive the Big Data economy will mint a whole new generation of Big Data Billionaires. 

So what if it costs us a little bit of our privacy?! 

If only I had been born with a geek chip in my brain instead of a fondness for good fiction and bad satire.

Here’s looking at you, kids, we're counting on you.  Stop texting and start inventing the next Big Data thing.   We need your billion dollar brains working overtime so we have Medicare and Social Security when Boomers turn 100.  Because it's all about us.  All of us.  But especially us.

Like I said, “What?  Me worry?”