First Post - Gotta start somewhere

By way of an introduction, my name is Anson Smith (pleased to meet you), and I came here to party (and by party I mean learn about Big Data). I work QA at a local education technology company, a position I scored through grit, raw brainpower, and critical thinking skills acquired in my otherwise useless pursuit of a BA in East Asian Studies. Japan Focus, from the University of Arizona. Considering I have a deep love of technology and am apparently good at things IS/IT/BI/Dev adjacent, I thought getting my MS in MIS would be a good way to solidify those skills and showcase my abilities with shiny credentials. In my spare time I enjoy hiking, reading literally anything, the occasional video game, traveling, and biking. But at my heart I'm a nerd.

So what does that have to do with anything? My nerd-dom is at the heart of why I am here; I LOVE this stuff. Technology. Computers, Internet of Things, wearable tech, I love it all. I like to consider myself an early adopter; if there's something novel I want to try it out. Every step, every leap, I'm there with rapt attention, and what's got my attention now is data.  In my fours years of undergraduate work and two years living in Japan I learned how to observer, record, and analyze cultural facets to better understand Japan through behavior, through media, through social norms and interactions, and participation in cultural activities.

Me, bottom right, participating in cultural activities, 2011

Essentially I spent four plus years learning how to understand people and culture through what they read, what they watch, what they eat, and what they do. Big Data is right in my wheelhouse. My case studies were looking at a film, or song, and trying to determine meaning from it, and understanding to motivations of people who might listen to it. But with Big Data, the sky is the limit for what we can achieve; forget wondering who might be compelled to listen to a song; with the Lecture-mentioned 35 Zettabytes of data we can know exactly what demographics listen to that song, how they listened to it, and what they though it of. Forget just business applications; Big Data has potential to applied to so many ways.

This was running through my mind throughout the lecture; the incredible applications of Big Data. Business is the most obvious application of the three V's; volume, velocity, and variety of data. But imagine how much better a government can be with properly analyzed data on the attitudes and consumption habits of the populace? Imagine how improved polling can be when data science is brought to bare on outdated statistical modeling? Imagine for a second, a world without sampling errors? 

This is the possibility of Big Data. Our Lecture refers to the coming Data epoch in terms of a paradigm shift, and I think this is apt. Like the advent of the telegraph, radio, telephone, television, and internet before it, the harnessing of Data is poised to completely disrupt the global status quo. Datafication, or the increasing tracking and storage our of individual tiny points of data, will provided a wealth of knowledge I could only ever dream of as an Anthropologist; forget participant observation! I've got data now to show me societal trends on a macro level, which will inform a delving analysis to a micro level (I don't mean actually forget participant observation; it's a vital part of cultural analysis, but data reduces our reliance on it for sure). Thousands upon thousands of terabytes of dynamic, information is being collected and mined every day. 

So if you've gotten this far (and I know you have because we have to read each other's blogs haha) you might be wondering "Why? Why is this guy rambling about Anthropology in an MIS course?" More than just something familiar to me, I wanted to highlight just how broad the applications of Big Data really are. We're all here for our Business Intelligence certificate (or MS) and business is the optimal word, but we would be doing a great disservice to the very nature of this paradigm obliterating phenomena if we failed to conceptualize the broader adaptations of the literal mountains of data generated every day. It's up to us burgeoning Analysts, Data Miners, and Scientists to unravel the digital spools of information and apply it in the most creative ways possible. We have in our hands the potential to change the world in incredible ways, and I'm excited to brainstorm and conceptualize the possibilities with you over the next few months!