Big Data

I'll be honest, before this I have never heard of the term "big data". But now it surprises me that such a term can have such a big impact on the way the internet operates. It has impacts on targeted marketing, taking nonsensical data from all over the web, from all kinds of people  and putting them to use for businesses. But it doesn't have to do with the internet, because "over the course of the past four years, we’ve seen big data move from its birthplace in the consumer Internet to more traditional enterprises. Banks are doing a better job identifying fraud and watching for money laundering. Retailers have better models of their customers’ tastes and preferences. Telecommunications vendors are analyzing traffic patterns and content in more detail than ever before, and are building and running more efficient networks as a result. Doctors have more accurate pictures of the genetic and environmental causes of disease, and are discovering more effective
treatments as a result" (Cloudera).

But this "big data" is just that, all kinds of data, almost randomized. This is why companies like the Apache Hadoop tries to analyze, and even more importantly, organizes  it. This open-source project is helping a lot of organizations organize all their data that they acquire. But all that it does today, all the problems its can solve today, is nothing that can compare to what it can do in the future. And that is what interests me, because even now it can detect fraud, create targeted marketing, and even help doctors detect cause of diseases. Think of the potential it will have in the future, and because of the growing data in the foreseeable future, it will be even more useful than it is today.