The future is data, they say.
Doug Merritt, CEO of the software firm Splunk, says (as reported in a Fortune magazine newsletter): “The world will be generating 175 zetabytes [sic] of data by 2025—10x the volume of data the world sees today. But the value of data remains trapped for most organizations. In the 2020s, I suspect that data will become a business imperative—organizations who embrace it will lead their markets, while organizations who don’t act on dark data will fall behind and falter.”
A zettabyte (the correct spelling), by the way, is 1 sextillion bytes, in case you’re not used to thinking in numbers that large.
This means that the world is generating more information than it can possibly know what to do with.
“When it comes to innovation, we see business leaders moving to the next chapter of using data as their most powerful source of competitive advantage,” comments IBM CEO Ginni Rometty. “This includes scaling A.I. [artificial intelligence] everywhere.”
Companies appear to be stumbling over one another at all costs to avoid missing out on the latest data analysis systems. But the question is irrelevant if you can’t use the data you already have. If you already have more potatoes than you know what to do with, why plant more potatoes?
“In today’s technology-enamored marketplace, a case can be made that the movement toward all things digital—in coupons, communication and commerce—might be the next trend to fall short of its over-hyped expectations,” says a recently released white paper from LOC Software.
The white paper suggests that retailers might profit most by applying new data gathering techniques to long-tested industry methods—including targeted coupons (e.g., avocado promotions keyed to customers who are known purchasers of avocados), slow-day offers, and “up-to promotions” (discounts applied up to a certain dollar amount of purchases).
Notice something here. The data aren’t going to do your thinking for you. Applying the information to your specific business still requires human intelligence.
In short, it seems that we don’t need more data; we need more intelligence to apply to the data. That still comes down to human intelligence.
Unfortunately, present circumstances often don’t favor this important element. Indeed, the rush to new data systems—the constant inflow of giga- and tera- and zettabytes of information—can impede the use of human intelligence, which requires leisure and time in order to think things through and see the long term. But time and leisure are precisely the things that are the most scarce right now.
If the information industry leaders are right, the 2020s aren’t going to be any more gracious in offering these opportunities.
Auguste Villiers de l’Isle Adam, a nineteenth-century French nobleman and author, jadedly wrote, “As for living, our servants will do that for us.”
As for thinking, are we going to let our computers do that for us?
