Big Data Is Not the New Oil by Jer Thorp.
From the post:
Every 14 minutes, somewhere in the world, an ad exec strides on stage with the same breathless declaration:
“Data is the new oil!”
It’s exciting stuff for marketing types, and it’s an easy equation: big data equals big oil, equals big profits. It must be a helpful metaphor to frame something that is not very well understood; I’ve heard it over and over and over again in the last two years.
The comparison, at the level it’s usually made, is vapid. Information is the ultimate renewable resource. Any kind of data reserve that exists has not been lying in wait beneath the surface; data are being created, in vast quantities, every day. Finding value from data is much more a process of cultivation than it is one of extraction or refinement.
Jer’s last point, “more a process of cultivation than it is one of extraction or refinement,” and his last recommendation:
…we need to change the way that we collectively think about data, so that it is not a new oil, but instead a new kind of resource entirely.
resonates the most with me.
Everyone can apply the same processes to oil and get out largely the same results.
Data on the other hand, cannot be processed or analyzed until some user assigns it values.
Data and the results of analysis of data, have value only because of the assignment of meaning by some user.
Assignment of meaning is fraught with peril, as we saw in K-Nearest Neighbors: dangerously simple.
You can turn the crank on big data, but the results will disappoint unless there is an understanding of the data.
I first saw this at: Big Data Is Not the New Oil