March 2, 1962 – “To Serve Man,” one of the all-time, classic episodes of The Twlight Zone series, airs for the first time.
It’s an episode that pops into journalist Noreen Seebacher’s head after she finishes reading the new Pew Internet/Elon University survey on the state of big data.
More about that in a minute. But first a brief synopsis of the “To Serve Man” episode.
As the story goes, the nine-foot-tall Kanamits, an alien race, arrive on earth promising peace and pledging to share their technology with humans – all aimed at improving the lives of the earthlings.
But, of course, this is the Twlight Zone and all is not as it seems. A team of linguists attempts to translate the aliens’ language, using a book whose title they figure out is “To Serve Man.” The title is a play on the verb serve, which means “to assist” as well as “to provide as a meal.”
So, what does all this have to do with big data?
Seebacher says the episode, “To Serve Man,” could be considered a metaphor for big data. Think about it: the Kanamits land on earth, albeit uninvited, and they start getting the word out that all they want to do is help the humans improve their lives.
And they do.
“Their advanced technology quickly eradicates many of the planet’s oldest problems, from hunger to the high cost of energy,” Seebacher says. “And it makes life better, or so it seems – resolving questions and increasing convenience. It can even transform barren deserts into big, blooming fields.”
The parallels to big data are undeniable, she adds.
Unfortunately, only too late do the unsuspecting humans realize the aliens’ book is a cookbook filled with recipes about how to serve man on a plate – for dinner.
What Seebacher wants to know is whether big data has the potential to serve man by making life better, or if it will “simply serve man up on a metaphorical plate to government agencies, marketers, and various and assorted other data collectors.”
Seebacher says that although the Pew survey suggests increased enthusiasm for big data, study respondents are also a bit skeptical when it comes to collecting and using big data and determining its overall value.
However, she adds that more than half the of 1,021 Internet experts, observers, and stakeholders participating in the survey predict big data is likely to be “a huge positive for society in nearly all respects” by the year 2020.
“Technology experts believe the growing ability to collect and analyze massive sets of information, known as big data, will help people be more nimble and adaptive,” according to the report.
It’s pretty clear that big data will help us find, track, and use a myriad of connections and observations, Seebacher says. “The unanswered question: Will we like what we see or have the humanity to use the information ethically, transparently, and for the general good?”
Yes, big data could open up all kinds of possibilities in the future. And yes, it has the potential to serve man. But if we don’t use big data for the public good, we won’t be any better than the Kanamits, she says.
But Seebacher really has nothing to worry about. Tune in tomorrow when we’ll tell you exactly how big data is being used to serve man by making life better.
Next Steps:
- Subscribe to our blog to stay up to date on the latest insights and trends in big data.
- Join us on August 23 at 1 p.m. EDT for our complimentary webcast, “In-Memory Computing: Lifting the Burden of Big Data,” presented by Nathaniel Rowe, Research Analyst, Aberdeen Group and Michael O’Connell, PhD, Sr. Director, Analytics, TIBCO Spotfire. In this webcast, Rowe will discuss recent findings from Aberdeen Group’s December 2011 study on the current state of big data, which shows that organizations that have adopted in-memory computing are not only able to analyze larger amounts of data in less time than their competitors – they do it much, much faster. TIBCO Spotfire’s Michael O’Connell will follow with a discussion of Spotfire’s big data analytics capabilities.
- Download a copy of the Aberdeen In-Memory Big Data whitepaper here.
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