INFORMATION: THE NEXT NATURAL RESOURCE, PART 1

I’ve spent my career looking at how large quantities of complex information affects every part of our lives and this is the most exciting time to be doing that.  Information affects finances.  Information affects your health.  It affects the life choices presented to you.  It cannot be overstated how important the accumulation of enormous sums of detailed data about all of us and every aspect of business is.

Ten years ago who imagined that so much of the planet would be photographed and those photographs made widely available, as in Google Earth? Or who would have imagined that we would be so willing to share large amounts of personal information through public and quasi-public outlets like Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare?

How much data are we talking about?  The earth generated about 4 zettabytes of digital data in 2013.  IDC forecasts that we will generate 40 zettabytes (ZB) by 2020.  Now, all that data isn’t used, but increasingly, more of it is. And it’s not just stored once.  Data with value is branched off into numerous databases across multiple companies.  In only the last few years, as much data has been generated as had previously ever existed.

For the rest of this article, please refer to Eckerson Group.