Category Archives: Big Data
From Megabyte to Zettabyte: How Big?
“If you wrote out the information contained in one megabyte by hand, the resulting line of 1s and 0s would be more than five times as tall as Mount Everest. If you wrote out one gigabyte by hand, it would … Continue reading
Posted in Big Data, Information storage, Measurement
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Meteorological Observations, the Telegraph, and Metcalfe’s Law
Today in 1870, the U.S. Weather Bureau made its first meteorological observations using 24 locations that provided reports via telegraph. For the first time, weather observations from distant points could be “rapidly” collected, plotted, and analyzed at one location. It’s … Continue reading
Posted in Big Data, Telegraph, This day in information
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The Oxford English Dictionary: The First Crowdsourcing Project?
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) added the word “crowdsourcing” in its most recent quarterly online update. While the term was coined by Jeff Howe in 2006, after the Word Wide Web has made it easier to solicit “input from a large … Continue reading
Posted in Big Data, Crowdsourcing, Dictionaries, World Wide Web
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Big Data Analysis at the NSA, 1962
The IBM 7950, also known as Harvest, was a one-of-a-kind adjunct to the Stretch computer which was installed at the US National Security Agency (NSA). Built by IBM, it was delivered in 1962 and operated until 1976, when it was … Continue reading
Posted in Big Data, Computer history
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Timeline of Information Access and Sharing (Infographic)
Source: Coveo
The Digital Revolution (Infographic)
Posted in Big Data, Data growth, Digitization, Infographics
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Data-ism and Data Mania, 2013 and 1971
“If you asked me to describe the rising philosophy of the day, I’d say it is data-ism. We now have the ability to gather huge amounts of data. This ability seems to carry with it certain cultural assumptions — that … Continue reading
Posted in Big Data, Social Impact
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Big Data in the Age of the Telegraph
Caitlin Rosenthal writes in “Big Data in the Age of the Telegraph,” McKinsey Quarterly, March 2013: “In 1854, Daniel McCallum took charge of the operations of the New York and Erie Railroad. With nearly 500 miles of track, it was one of … Continue reading
The Story of Information 