

So Far, Big Data Is Small Potatoes - chiachun
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2014/06/09/so-far-big-data-is-small-potatoes/

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capkutay
"Wall Streeters have the fastest computers, most sophisticated software and
biggest databases money can buy, and yet many failed to see the 2008 crash
coming."

How could software catch predatory lending practices written into policy and
executed by bankers? Wall streeters were using their 'fastest computers' and
'biggest databases' to make and manage money. Even if they were using
cloudera's CDH or some other big data framework, they will use it for the
exact same reason. Maybe even find a way to maximize profits and exit before
the next crash.

I'm probably nitpicking, but that's not a real 'big data' use case. Maybe when
every computer passes the turing test and learns to spot corruption, they can
throw that in a mapreduce job and solve the problems this guy is talking
about.

From a commercial standpoint, people only care about making big data cheap and
easy for enterprises to adopt. There are only a handful of really innovative,
forward-thinking implementations of 'big data'.

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briantakita
The article is simply stating that there was much hype around Big Data.
Surprise, it's not fulfilling the hype.

There's more to predicting the future than crunching numbers, finding
correlations, and making pretty graphs.

> Maybe when every computer passes the turing test and learns to spot
> corruption, they can throw that in a mapreduce job and solve the problems
> this guy is talking about.

I would be very surprised. History has shown that if we have intelligent
agents (humans) with roughly equal access to data, we still have unpredictable
results.

