Let me count the ways

Let me count the ways to feed the Big Elephant


Look anywhere around you. The Big Elephant can graze all it wants. The green pasture in the Big Data forest is so fertile, that a herd of elephants can happily and peacefully graze. 


Big Data forest can keep the Big Elephants happy and fat for all the decades to come. Let us count the ways.

• All of us are already hooked to Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and so many photo and video sharing sites like Picassa, Flikr, You Tube. We are all generating a lot of data every hour and day.
• When you walk, talk, drive, jog and even every breath you take, you are all generating lots of data. Talk on cell phone, SMS on your smart phone, play a game on your mobile device, generating a lot of data. You drive in a car, while talking, generating data about you and about your car.
• I can conceive of new embedded technology when your car radio will report to a data hungry company which radio station you are listening. These companies will even give you voice commands for you to change your radio station, and participate in surveys, further giving out a lot about your different life preferences and even "secrets".
• We are already tricked by all these billion dollar valued companies to share information about our friends, secret friends and lovers, our complete "personality profiles". They make it fun and tempt us to tell these companies about everything about us. Our wife, husband or lover may even not know as much as these companies about us.
• Everything is an open secret. You may not believe me when you are reading these sentences. However, the following types of information about you is all stored by these Big Data companies:

1. Your name: different versions and variations
2. Your date of birth
3. Few digits of your social security number
4. Bank Account Number
5. Your current address and addresses for the last many years
6. The car or cars you drive
7. Your emails, Facebook accounts, Twitter handle, Linkedin and myriads of sites that gave you free service, as you have already signed off and given them permissions, beyond your belief. It is simple: none of us read the many pages of legal contracts and permissions, as we are eager to get to the free "candies" they give, and come back again with more candies. It is painless brain surgery, heart surgery, lobotomy and more.
8. As you walk in or drive in to a store or any place, you may not even think that something "creepy is crawling" The store manager, the store clerk, and even the security guard, will know everything about you. They know all your purchase history, payment or non-payment history, and even if you have shop lifted or showed even the slightest tendency any time in your life. They know if you are with your wife / husband or boy friend / girl friend. They would know if you are hungry or thirsty. They know if you have been window shopping that day or any day of your life, and bought nothing or even looking for a price / discount deal.
9. If you are web shopping, same things apply.
10. The Big Data companies know all companies that you worked for, how much you have exaggerated on your Linkedin profile or resume websites. They know how many "resume personalities" avatars you have already taken. They can predict your next resume version better than GOD. This Big Data is bigger and smarter than your GOD! The list is endless!

• With the smart grid happening and coming to life, even your home devices, equipment and furniture become "secret agents" to send all about your "home's personality"
• Even inanimate objects, plants, animals and different "personalities of nature" will be fit with "secret agents" called wireless sensors. They are all connected to each other in a fault tolerant mesh network, talking to each other in "code languages" called protocols.

Yes. The Big Elephants will be very busy, day and night, data feasting, still hungry for more.

• Does this give you a monstrous picture? 
• Does this make you happy? 
• Does this make you feel helpless?

Let me know how you feel by emailing to me at ICubed.Murthy@Gmail.com

Next story I am going to tell you is about "Security and Privacy".

What? What privacy are you thinking of anyway? You have none of it.

I will give you the topics of some of the future stories:

• Zombie Elephants: The bigger the elephant that becomes a Zombie, the bigger the calamity
• After you read some of these stories, you will never be afraid of darkness, devil, Satan, earth quakes, volcanoes, tsunami, atomic bombs, bio-weapons nor even the epic floods that some religions have predicted.
• Now, you will not even be afraid of death.
• From now on you will be able to get peaceful and sound sleep all nignt
• Who am I kidding?