Big Data and the Future of the World

“BUY 1 FREE 1 – SPECIAL TODAY. Exchange this SMS at the nearest outlet. Valid until 31 December 2018. xyz applies. “

The contents of the short message service or SMS above may already be familiar to you. Almost every day, when you are in a place that is close to a shopping center or restaurant, you get a promotional SMS as above.

You might be wondering, how does the restaurant know that you are indeed close to one of the shops or outlets.

You are the owner of an Apple belogo smartphone, you must be familiar with the personal assistant named, Siri. What you can talk with, find something you need, find updated information and so forth.

You certainly ask, how can he give a response like other humans in general. It’s not one hundred percent like humans. But that is enough to make you wonder not how siri can be invited to chat like humans in general.

Another example, in an era that is completely online now, you must have shopped or at least visited online shopping sites. Such as you plan to buy something, then you visit the shop.

The next day you open another site that is not a shopping site you’ve visited before. Say a news site.

Suddenly you see the item you are looking for appears as an ad on the news site. You may be surprised how this news site can know that you have or are looking for the advertised item.

These are about three examples of things that you will most likely experience. Until now, are you still wondering or wondering about how that happened?

How does the telecommunications provider know you are? How can an application on a smart phone talk to you like your friends and how these sites know what you are looking for or you need. The answer is big data.

When you speak or hear the word data, what comes to mind is a set of data lines that contain detailed information about something. Say, student data.

Then we will imagine a line of data that includes information about students in the school. Such as the Parent Number, Name, Place and date of birth, address, parent’s name and other detailed information.

Then what if we talk about big data?

What is big data?

Along with advances in technology that covers all aspects, the world of information must also experience growth. And of course the source of information itself is data.

If we used to know data in the form of rows and columns only, then proceed with the manual method using a ledger, then switch to computers like Lotus and Excel and then in the form of a structured database which is all in text or letter format.

Now there is a technology known as big data technology. A technology that accommodates, processes and visualizes data in various forms or formats. The data stored can be of course text, images, sounds of various other formats.

With big data, we can’t even process data into a report. For business people, big data can be used to analyze consumer behavior. So that it can provide recommendations to consumers automatically about products that match what consumers are looking for.

If we hear the word big data, of course, what is imagined is a large amount of data and true indeed because volume or size is one of the 3 characteristics of big data, namely Variety, Velocity and Volume.

We will discuss these characteristics one by one.

Variety: One of the big data characters is the format of the stored data can be in various formats. Whether it’s text, images or sound. In contrast to conventional databases that store data in the form of row data and you need to process it first to get the information you need.

Volume: Due to the variety of formats that can be stored, of course, causes the size of the data stored to be large as well. When compared with conventional databases, the comparison is like this, big data can store a file such as an image with a size of about 1 to 2 Megabytes.

If about 1,000 images are stored, then a storage medium of approximately 2 gigabytes is needed. For conventional databases, for that size you can store hundreds of thousands or maybe even millions of rows of data.

Velocity or speed: Data is material for making decisions. If the data needed can be accessed quickly, so will the information obtained quickly to make that decision. One of the characteristics of big data which is also an advantage is the speed of getting data or information including visualization.

You can try using the Siri application on your iPhone or iPad. You can calculate how long Siri responds to your question. Or, if you go somewhere and get a promotional text, you can calculate how long the text has been in your cellphone since you were there.

Application of Big Data – Machine Learning

As great as any of the characteristics possessed, big data still needs to be applied in order to become information that can be used. Big data remains only a data source that needs further processing to be able to make it as a source of information.

Big data can be applied in various forms of systems or applications. Can also be processed directly by yourself. However, for big data, people need specific abilities to process it.

Because the treatment for big data is very different when compared to conventional databases. Need specific expertise to process it.

When compared to databases in general that use queries to process it, big data has the principle of NoSQL (Not Only SQL). Which means that data processing does not only use SQL or queries like databases in general.

Examples of the application of big data that is common and widely used is machine learning. What is machine learning? True machine learning is one of the applications that is a branch of Artificial Intelligence.

You certainly have used Google to find something you need, right? when you type in the search bar on Google a few letters, Google seems to try to analyze what you want to search for.

Google through its technologies, such as google maps, google translate, google earth and so on, are various examples of machine learning. Google’s applications certainly have a data source that is not small.

For Example Google Maps: An application that you can use as a signpost when you want to travel from one place to another.

In the past when you didn’t know where you had to go to your destination, now you just need to open the Google Maps application to show which way you can go.

We are certainly asking no, what data is stored by Google for the maps application and how much data is stored? It is not possible for text data to be stored for this application. Because the results we see are in the form of images and Google will display the map as you want in a relatively fast time.

Your cell phone has a GPS feature directly read by google maps to show your current position. Then you enter your destination. When you press the “Go” button, Google will retrieve the data and then do the rendering. So that it will be visible on your mobile screen in the direction you can go to get to your destination.

Also included information about traffic conditions or smooth traffic in red and yellow blue as an indicator. That’s how Google makes use of its big data on the Google Maps application.

Google has successfully exploited its wealth of data and processed it into information that people need. Google studies human behavior to design applications that it makes. Like google maps that are designed based on people’s needs for information about directions or maps.

Then also added information about traffic conditions. Whether the traffic is in a state of total traffic, the traffic is mediocre or smooth.

Google also implements features for an even number of vehicle police numbers. So if your car is even numbered and you are traveling on an odd date, then Google Maps can show you which way you should go.

There are many more Google applications that apply big data. Google translate, youtube, and of course the search engine itself, which is almost certainly opened by almost everyone in the world every day.

Big Data For Business

In the end the goal of implementing big data is business. Not only Google, other technology giants like Yahoo !, Facebook, Apple and IBM also apply big data to run their business.

Many companies use big data to determine their business strategy. Like giving promotions to customers based on customer behavior.

Some use it for anti-fraud strategies. There is even a “sell” of the data itself. What does it mean? There are several companies that process the data they have, then analyze and sell the data to other companies.

For example, Company X is an online loan company. This company has a customer profile related to credit quality, how historical payments are, whether there is arrears or not, and others. The customer profile is then processed in the form of credit scoring that has a certain range of values.

When the data is “ripe”, company X will sell information about its customer profiles to other companies or financial institutions. Information in the form of scoring can be used as a reference by companies or institutions that buy information from company X to be able to decide whether a customer is eligible or not given a loan.

From the example above, we can do the calculation of how much income can be obtained by a company from the transaction of buying and selling data. If 1 data is valued at Rp. 10,000, -.

A company buys about 1,000 data per day on average from company X. Then company X’s income per day from one company is IDR 10,000,000 and IDR 300,000,000 a month. Amazing income right?

If Company X has 10 customers with the same average usage, the company can generate Rp.3,000,000,000 per month.

Nowadays we see a lot of new companies (startups) mushrooming. Starting from, online transportation, online ticket purchases and even loans and credit cards online.

You might also be surprised that these new companies easily “burn money” with lucrative promos. Where do they get the money to finance the promo? Why do so many big companies want to invest in startup companies? The risk of failure is even greater.

From the example of company X, maybe you can answer a few questions earlier. Businesses with big data do indeed have a promising future. With that business, how giant companies like Google or Facebook “live”.

The Future of the World with Big Data

All data and information are so open and transparent. Anyone can find out about other people’s data easily. It may be that you order food through online or via telephone the food seller already knows about your health history. So you can recommend foods that you should consume.

Or you come to a place like a bank or office building the customer service or receptionist already knows about your personal data without you having to introduce yourself or show your identity card. Because there is a face detector installed in that place. Amazing is not it?

Worldwide, several issues related to big data itself are still being debated. This is related to the legality and regulations that exist in this country. Moreover, data that is very personal and sensitive, such as data in banks or other financial institutions.

You may have heard of the case of Facebook allegedly selling data to other parties in this case to the Cambridge Analytica which at that time was used for political purposes, one of which was for the American presidential election winning Donald Trump and the British referendum from the European Union, also known as Brexit on Last 2016.

Apart from all the pros and cons related to its application, because big data can be related to small things and privacy, we can imagine the world as it is increasingly without limits with the existence of big data.

All information data is so easy to access even to the small things that seem not too important. Whatever we do, wherever we are, whatever we want, anyone can find out.