The Knowledge Age
According to industry study, the “Information Age” is about to end soon as we are entering another age “The Knowledge Age”. The study stated that “Information Age” began in the 1940s with mainframe computers; grew quickly in the 1980s with the personal computer; exploded in the 1990s with the Internet, then reached the top in 2000s with mobile phones, and the integration of several devices into one (The iPhone, iPads etc.).
The evident of the information age is obvious: Over one billion smartphones are being used around the world today and the number is still growing; the internet speed is getting faster as more countries are adopting broadband; information is flowing continuously and connecting everything. However, information alone without context is useless, unless it is changing into meaningful knowledge. Having information without context often makes people confuse and act hastily. We have seen evident of bad loans in the banking industry where people only look at the numbers without understand them; or the stock markets with certain index numbers go up and down every few seconds. Without clear understanding of these indicators but only look at raw data has created confusion and false information often can trigger panic. That is why stock market crashes, economic recesses, which contributed to the recent financial crisis.
A financial company executive explained: “We had the data, a lot of data but without the knowledge to understand them. Few years ago, people looked at the numbers and panicked and that was why the banking industry meltdown. Even today with so much data available but few people to analyze and to make sense out of them. That is why we need Big Data analytics. In the Information Age, internet and mobile phone are “key enablers” but in the Knowledge Age, key enabler is Big Data analytic tools. Today we just open the door into this knowledge age but soon we will be able to make better decisions.”
There are issues with the transition from the Information Age to the Knowledge Age. In a Big Data Conference last week in New York, someone asked: “What will happen to countries that just enter the information age? What will happen to people who begin to use information technology or people who are still living in the agriculture age or the industrial age? How could they catch up? After several serious discussions among the panelists, the answer was “Some will be left behind as they will NOT be able to catch up, as they are so far behind.”
With Big Data at least we know that billion of stand-alone data without context can overwhelm, confuse and mislead rather than helping. In other words, we begin to know what we do not know and begin to obtain that knowledge.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
