The Data Singularity is Here

by Michael E. Driscoll | March 8, 2010

In this blog post I’ll attempt to sketch the forces behind what I’m calling, somewhat sensationally, the Data Singularity, and then (in a following post) discuss what I see as its consequences.

In a nutshell, the Data Singularity is this: humans are being spliced out of the data-driven processes around us, and frequently we aren’t even at the terminal node of action. International cargo shipments, high-frequency stock trades, and genetic diagnoses are all made without us.

Absent humans, these data and decision loops have far less friction; they become constrained only by the costs of bandwidth, computation, and storage– all of which are dropping exponentially.

The result is an explosion of data thrown off from these machine-mediated pipelines, along with data about those flows (and data about that data, and so on). The machines all around us — our smart phones, smart cars, and fee-happy bank accounts — are talking, and increasingly we’re being left out of the conversation.

So whether or not the Singularity is Near, the Data Singularity is here, and its consequences are being felt.

But before I discuss these consequences, I’d like to expand on the premise. The world wasn’t always drowning in this data deluge, so how did we get here?

I. Data at the Speed of Speech
Read more

Filed Under analytics | 25 Comments