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Due to the introduction of the internet, social media, webpages- anything that creates data is contributing to big data. “Big data is a popular term used to describe the exponential growth and availability of data, both structured and unstructured.” (Laney 2001) Without data, there would be no saved content, which would result in computers being useless, similar without big data, the internet would not exist.  Every time a website is opened or a status is updated, it generates data; big data is being used to make sense of all this data.

  Big data is often broken down into the three v’s; volume, variety and velocity. Volume focuses on the size of volume of the data, how big a status update or tweet is in terms of data. Variety looks at data coming from a range of sources now instead of just one, it can be structured or unstructured, internal or external and/or from a whole multitude of places. The velocity focuses on the speed data is stored and processed. Big Data was original used to reflect on previous results e.g. a company’s sales over the past year, however now it is being used to predict what will happen. Predicting failures occurring before they even happen, (Pearl 2012)

    While the evolution of new media is great, it also has a down fall in terms of big data. In 2011, 1.8 zetabytes of data was created and replicated to make that simpler, it would take 57,500,000,000 32GB iPods to hold that much data. (The Economists 2012) It is almost concerning that the humans are creating this much data at such a rapid pace, but what’s even more concerning is that it’s only going to increase more and more. With the constant update of technologies, data is going to get created and replicated a lot more frequently. It’s not just the increase of data that is being stored that’s the issue though; privacy is no longer available when using the internet. Without changing settings, anyone with Facebook can see your personal details and more product policies are allowing third party companies to track internet activity. If you post something online, it is going to be stored as data and accessible even if is deleted. (The Economists 2012)

  Though there are two sides to big data, I believe that without the proper introduction of privacy and tight security networks, the internet could eventually become too revealing to use. If it’s possible to pull out images and statuses that were deleted from the archives, then what could that mean for the future generation. Everyone has put up their fair share of silly information or imagery up online, but could this data come back to haunt us in our later lives?

Laney, Doug. 2001. 3D Data Management: Controlling Data Volume, Velocity, and Variety. META Group Inc. Accessed 11th May 2014.  http://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/files/2012/01/ad949-3D-Data-Management-Controlling-Data-Volume-Velocity-and-Variety.pdf

  Pearl, Daniel. 2012. Volume, Velocity and Variety of Big Data. Accessed 11th May 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FidKQsJdIG0

  The Economist. 2012. The Dark Side of Big Data. Accessed 11th May 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raJOkguPrH4

Woodford, D. 2014. “KCB206 Internet, Self & Beyond.” Week 9 Lecture Notes. Accessed 8 May 2015. https://lecturecapture.qut.edu.au/ess/echo/presentation/11dcf106-e7c9-44eb-a753-74dfff689043?ec=true