Whoever unlocks the reams of big data will win. But can big data survive without creativity? OLIVER Strategist, Alan Bryant, shares his takeaways from the Big Bang Data exhibition at Somerset House.
Big Data, it could well be the advertising buzzword of the decade. The increasing proliferation of sensors, smart devices and wearable technology has led to a massive explosion of data. For years we’ve been told that ‘whoever unlocks the reams of big data will win’.
It can provide us a whole spectrum of insight about the world as well as the individual. It can do everything from recreating the god particle to letting us know what you did last summer.
Thought that was a horror movie? Not anymore, if you have Google Maps on your phone Google likely knows where you were last year better than you do.
The data being collected continues to grow exponentially, 90% of the data in the world today was created in the last 2 years! Facebook’s new arctic data centre is the size of 4 1/2 football pitches, and that just stores some of the data Facebook collects. We’re officially in a world of 1’s and 0’s.
All very 1984, and this data can undoubtedly be used in questionable ways, which this exhibition showed. However it also showed how it could be used in incredibly positive ways, so let’s focus on that today shall we, as that’s how we should be using it.
Having access to this extensive amount of information presents an unprecedented opportunity to do things differently. An abundance of valuable knowledge lies within the information produced by Big Data. This can be used to great effect if we know how to process and visualize it, you can gather as much interesting information as you like but if it’s not displayed in a way that people can understand, and understand quickly, then it’s not being used to it’s full potential.
As you’d expect with this amount of data being created, there’s a lot of noise. There was an exhibition that showed data gathered from a 1 second moment of Twitter where the artists collected every single tweet sent worldwide in that second period. 1 second on Twitter filled 4 large books! That equates to 345,600 books a day, over 135 million books in a year, all from tweets.
Surprise, surprise that after 5 minutes of reading hundreds of tweets I didn’t find one that was particularly enlightening or interesting, I did however find many about Justin Bieber being the love of somebodies life and One Direction being super cute, go figure.
This drills home just how hard it is to stand out from the noise nowadays, so how can we to make what we do for our clients stand out amidst the noise and not just another brand adding to the landfill?
What I took from this exhibition was that use of data plays a crucial role in us doing this, it can lead to more in depth insight and thinking, it can give us crucial insights into the world and we should be using it to it’s full potential. But if not combined with our knowledge, our morality and our creativity it’s all just a series of 1’s and 0’s.
I’ll end as the exhibition ends, with a quote Jonathon Harris’ piece of art ‘Data Will Help Us’.
“Data, It will help advertisers see people as statistics, but will it help us remember that those statistics are people?
“It will help educators make excellent standardized tests, but will it help us embrace different standards of excellence?
“It will help us see the world as it is, but will it help us see the world as it could be?”
The ‘Big Bang Data’ exhibition is on at Somerset House from now until Feb 28th.