Big Data and analytics, How do they relate to KM and how not to be a villain in the public’s face.
Analytics as defined by Webster is logical analysis which also makes it one of the first steps in KM.
Analytics makes the jobs for humans bit more easier as humans won’t have to sift thru data and information to find links by computer algorithms or artificial intelligence. Watson will find all the links your business needs and will present it to the company staff. This method allows many of them to come up with designs, products or engineer a better product around the info presented to them.
Big data can be in an office environment, can come from data generated by work stations – work times, amount of work done and persons working, by sensors throughout each floor, sensors outside and on sensors that measure each utility usage.
All this can be used to optimize electricity usage in a building. By having this data the office can calculate if it’s possible to go off grid altogether.
There’s many more things that can be done like how Boeing uses sensors across their Dreamliner. The difference here is instead of just some data that gets recorded on black boxes five minutes before a crash, these sensors record each change in many forms from temperature, pressure changes, stress changes on each part of the aircraft and all the changes and actions that take place within the flight.
Boeing also has new a use for all the data they generate from all the sensors available to them. This came about because of Obama administration’s push on environmental protection. Today as result of this, airline companies save large amounts on fuel costs, increasing their profits in return.
But in the rush to advance company owned technology, they don’t always meticulously question or think about all the damages they can be doing by going a bit too far when it comes to data collection. One example is the collection of individual data in many levels.
- The Bad and Ugly side of big data Analytics
- Biased ideas and actions as result of biased data will lead to deep divides appearing in society. For example taking data from smartphones to decide which areas to upgrade public facilities and utilities but all regions with people that don’t use smartphones gets left behind. Over time this social groups will bite back at the society that left them behind.
- Smart grids step too far in intruding to personal life. It would be great too but all corporations are out to sell data and make money, mostly the energy companies. How do they claim it? By claiming the meter they install at your home which doesn’t belong to you anything passing thru them belong to them.
Big Data Breaching Personal space
- Too many levels of data points being collected from banks, ISP, cable companies and shops with loyalty programs, invade the privacy and trust, on top of that they go and sell it to anyone that pays for it.
Therefore, clear lines need to be drawn, as people’s individual data should be the property of those individuals.
Companies, organisations and governments need to be guided by law as to where the line is and what they can’t cross such as creating more than necessary data points to collect data from. Sale of customer data that was collected under trust should be made punishable by life imprisonment as it is comparable to selling lives.
Business and greedy humans are giving analytics a bad evil face when it can do so much good for the world.
Breach of trust, privacy and human intellectual info is not a saleable right and must be prosecuted to the maximum possible sentences in courts.
Yes great research can be done using big data such as finding a cure for cancer but the data should be first be extracted and used only after participating people give their own consent, not by force and not through breach of privacy.
These kinds of actions will drive hostility towards government social order and then eventually lead to social unrest. To think businesses, governments and organisations were saving money by practising such short cuts in data gathering, they are just kidding themselves. They won’t have a place should social unrest break out and then spread around the world as a result of globalisation.
Looking forward
The future solution is for personal analytics generated applications and uses; big data must move out of the cloud and be managed by customers own hard drives for storing data, which cannot be claimed by others as theirs to sell and resell. This is more possible today as a result of advances in storage technology and a drop in price for storage.
And maybe greedy humans taken cared by an AI like president WATSON.