Category Archives: Data Lake

The Big Data Shell Game

11 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by in All Data, Big Data, Cloud, Data Lake, data science, Inform, educate and entertain., IoT, Martyn Jones

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,


To the experienced observer, Big Data propaganda may well appear to be a disorganised surfeit of half-truths, sleights of hand and boloney. Indeed, the once famously alliterative characterisation of Big Data as defined by volumes, variety and velocity, seems now more appropriately applied to the quantity, invariability and quality of the incessant self-aggrandising hype, hokum and Hadoop being astro-turfed by every dog and his guru. Indeed, the very fact that such an inevitable mega-trend needs so much hype, disingenuousness and spin to support its passage to universal applicability, is a massive contradiction, a disservice to professionals, and an artless deception worthy of our criticism and condemnation. Continue reading →

Big Data is Bullshit

11 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by in All Data, Analytics, Big Data, Data Lake, Inform, educate and entertain., Martyn Jones

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, ,


“I’ve been accused of vulgarity. I say that’s bullshit.” – Mel Brooks

If you enjoy this piece or find it useful then please consider joining The Big Data Contrarians:

Join The Big Data Contrarians here: https://www.linkedin.com/grp/home?gid=8338976

Being brutally honest, Big Data is bullshit. Not only is Big Data bullshit but it comes with a surfeit of pranksters, pundits and prissy big data bullshit-babblers, all willing (cue narration by Morgan Freeman) to “big-up Big Data in a vulgar, ill-mannered and predictably nauseating dance of professional-hustling… as old as time.”

However, is all Big Data bullshit? Is it all a fad, a load of old tripe and a confusion of weasels together with their surfeit of weasel words? Or, is there something of value, substance and tangibility to be found amongst the volumes, velocities and varieties of brazen and opportunistic self-aggrandizement, toxic speculation and opinions and unverifiable miracles?

For Google, Facebook and Twitter, Big Data certainly isn’t BS. For example, Google rely on Big Data as the biggest irreplaceable element in their colossal advertising business – so I am lead to believe. A business that accounts for more than 90% of Google’s revenue. So clearly, for the masters of web-based unstructured and complex search, Big Data is an essential element in their business model. The biggest essential element by far.

However, let´s be honest, we should consider the obvious. How many of us are really going to do business like Google?

Big Data technology and service vendors benefit tangibly from the Big Data movement, at least this is the impression that I get. Indeed, there is much talk about the relationship between Big Data, the Hadoop ecosphere and the big wild world of open source, but what is more interesting is that companies are bringing in revenue on the back of Big Data by offering battle-hardened business and enterprise versions of open source software. Then there is the business in consulting, with such a demand for Big Data gurus, Master Data Scientists and Number Conjurors, there must presumably be real people working in these roles, and paid handsomely for doing so.

But apart from the ‘success’ associated with the foundation of so many Big Data start-up businesses and the market-based commitment of some of ITs’ ‘great and good’ to the new digital zeitgeist of data volumes, velocities and varieties, just where are the other success stories of Big Data coming from?

To help us in our quest, I earlier compiled a not-so-exhaustive list of Big Data success stories, celebrity-chef like, to help us out. Here are some of the Big Data gems that I managed to track down:

  • Thanks to Big Data, the taxi service alternative channel Uber is making massive waves and shaking things up in the transport sector.
  • By leveraging Big Data AirBnB is turning the hospitality business on its head, and what´s more, making friends, and influencing people as they are doing so.
  • Amazon would not be what they are today if it were not for Big Data, in fact, without Big Data, they would be nothing.
  • One of the industries that will suffer revolutionary transformation because of Big Data will be the banking industry.
  • Big Data will increase the GDP of the USA by at least 1% or more, and the Spanish GDP could likewise add an additional 1%, for similar reasons.

These would be all great headlines for Big Data success stories, apart from one small flaw. None of them is exactly a Big Data success story in the Big Data defining characteristics of volumes, varieties and velocities of mainly unstructured data or in terms of the Hadoop technological kitchen-drawer ecosphere.

Something is happening, and it is not exactly legitimate. Can you guess what it is yet?

When it rains it pours, and when it rains Big Data hype it quickly turn into a monsoon of cloying hysteria. Spotting and pointing at Big Data bullshit babblers on forums like LinkedIn Pulse, Forbes and Information Management is no fun, unless your fun is nuking a school of intellectually challenged fish floundering in a barrel of vintage Malmsey.

However, it not only is no fun, but also more times than not it is a complete and utter waste of time trying to get people to adopt a more critical approach to thinking. Because for every Big Data bullshit babbler, there is a battalion of intransigent Big Data believers stuck in untenable and absurd positions, marooned from reason and ways back to rationality. You can’t use logic against belief, and you can´t turn back a rising tide of IT refugees who are desperately seeking succour in the apparently safer-havens of Big Data, Data Science and Data-driven voodoo.

Only the other day I read that “The emergence of Big Data is now allowing CEOs to increasingly base decisions on current “reality” rather than past experience, but the risks in the integrity and fullness of the data that they are “seeing” and “hearing” is often a barrier to getting a clear picture of what is actually going on.” This is really taking shameless baloney and wilful ignorance to all new heights, but it doesn’t stop there.

Elsewhere another eminent Big Data bullshit babbler wrote, “Clearly big data and AI will change almost every industry this decade… but none more than these”, referring vaguely and vacuously to “Healthcare, Finance and Insurance”.  What species of shameless and fatuous willy-waving goes so far out on a limb that it becomes massively removed from even being a grandiose and beguiling ‘bigging-up’ of a fad?

Finally yet importantly, I almost choked on my supersized Big Data popcorn the other day when I read, “Today, with the rise of the Internet, we capture “data” on everything.  Therefore, the new term “Big Data” is honestly like 1985 again.  But this time, Big Data will actually be really big and by some forecasts, be a $40 billion industry by 2018.”

This is not hype, it is not even simple deceit, it is astroturfing of 22 carat bullshit, and in most cases it’s clearly deliberate, it´s intentional and it´s grossly misleading. So why do people do it?

Given that Big Data is very much a niche technology, with very much a niche appeal, why do so many buffoons go around pretending that Big Data is for all of us? Like as if it was some sort of digital universal-panacea, when at the moment, and at best, it is a walk on bit-player with just a couple of lies who aspires to B actor status. In this sense, at present Big Data isn´t even the hero´s best friend.

Before I close the piece, I will leave you with the thoughts of Dan Ariely. Why? Because it just irritates the hell out of a section of the community of Big Data bullshit babblers, and it´s actually very accurate. Here it is:

“Big data is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it…”

Many thanks for reading.

In subsequent blog pieces I will be sharing my views on the evolution of information management in general, and the incorporation novel and innovative techniques, technologies and methods into well architected mainstream information supply frameworks, for primarily strategic and tactical objectives.

As always, please reach out and share your questions, views and criticisms on this piece using the comment box below. I frequently write about strategy, organisational, leadership and information technology topics, trends and tendencies. You are more than welcome to keep up with my posts by clicking the ‘Follow’ link and perhaps you will even consider sending me a LinkedIn invite if you feel our data interests coincide. Also feel free to connect via Twitter, Facebook and the Cambriano Energy website.

For more on this and other topics, check out some of my other posts:

Looking for your most valuable data? Follow the money – http://www.itworld.com/article/2982352/big-data/looking-for-your-most-valuable-data-follow-the-money.html

Stuff a great data architect should know –https://goodstrat.com/2015/08/16/stuff-a-great-data-architect-should-know-how-to-be-a-professional-expert

Big Data, the promised land where ‘smart’ is the new doh!–https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-data-promised-land-where-smart-new-doh-martyn-jones?trk=prof-post

Absolutely Fabulous Big Data Roles –https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/absolutely-fabulous-big-data-roles-martyn-jones?trk=prof-post

Not banking on Big Data? – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/banking-big-data-martyn-jones?trk=prof-post

10 amazing reasons to join The Big Data Contrarians –https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/10-amazing-reasons-join-big-data-contrarians-martyn-jones?trk=prof-post

Amazing Data Warehousing with Hadoop and Big Data–https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cloudera-kimball-dw-building-disinformation-factory-martyn-jones?trk=prof-post

The Big Data Contrarians: The Agora for Big Data dialogue–https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-data-contrarians-agora-dialogue-martyn-jones?trk=mp-reader-card

The Big Data Shell Game – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-data-shell-game-martyn-jones?trk=mp-reader-card

Aligning Data Warehousing and Big Data –https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/aligning-data-warehousing-big-martyn-jones?trk=mp-reader-card

Big Data Luddites – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-data-luddites-martyn-jones?trk=mp-reader-card

Data Warehousing Explained to Big Data Friends –https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/data-warehousing-explained-big-friends-martyn-jones?trk=mp-reader-card

Big Data, a promised land where the Big Bucks grow –https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-data-promised-land-where-bucks-grow-martyn-jones-6023459994031177728?trk=mp-reader-card

The Big Data Contrarians – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-data-contrarians-martyn-jones?trk=mp-reader-card

Is big data really for you? Things to consider before diving in–https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-data-really-you-things-consider-before-diving-martyn-jones?trk=mp-reader-card

Big Data Explained to My Grandchildren –https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-data-explained-my-grandchildren-martyn-jones?trk=mp-reader-card

If you enjoy this piece or find it useful then please consider joining The Big Data Contrarians:

Join The Big Data Contrarians here: https://www.linkedin.com/grp/home?gid=8338976

Many thanks, Martyn.

The Million-Dollar Big Data Briefing

11 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by in agile, Big Data, Consider this, Data Lake, Inform, educate and entertain., Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,


If you enjoy this piece or find it useful then please consider joining The Big Data Contrarians: https://www.linkedin.com/grp/home?gid=8338976

Many thanks, Martyn.

Big Data, together with Cloud computing, the Internet of Things and Machine Learning, are topics that are very much to the fore in contemporary trends in Information Management. But is Big Data really the revolution that people have been waiting for or is it simply about the next steps in the evolution of business data architecture and management?  Continue reading →

The Princess Diana Memorial Data Lake

11 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by in Big Data, Data Lake, hadoop, Inform, educate and entertain., Martyn Jones

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,


If you enjoy this piece or find it useful then please consider joining The Big Data Contrarians: https://www.linkedin.com/grp/home?gid=8338976

Many thanks, Martyn.

If Princess Diana had been alive during the formative years of the Big Data revolution there would have been a plethora of influential Big Data bullshit babblers issuing their gushingly awful pieces in places like Forbes, the WSJ and professional blogging forums about the Big Data humanitarian causes closest to the heart of the peoples’ princess. And if tragedy had repeated itself, and had been reported not as paparazzi driven schmaltz or morbid vulgarity, but as something even more rancid and farcical, we would now have a Princess Diana Memorial Data Lake in some regal park in London or Milton Keynes –powered by Hadoop. Because, as the bullshit babblers would have it, “that is what she would have wanted”.

But, is this entirely fair? Should we view the outpourings of the biggest Big Data bullshit babblers on the entire internet as the inevitable result of free will, or is Big Data a message from God, in the same way that hard drugs are a signal to certain rock stars that they have too much available cash?

Which brings me to another issue. In a recent interview, I was given a list of data related terms, and was asked which one I preferred. Big Data, Smart Data, Small Data… you know what I mean. Anyway, I went off on a tangent about domestic pets and anthropomorphism. Okay, so it was logical entrapment, but I wanted to make a point. “Don´t you think that ascribing human behavior and thought to pets is a bit weird?” I asked. “No, came back the reply”. It wasn´t the answer I wanted, because the answer I wanted was “Yes, it certainly is” not a “No, that’s what my mum thinks as well”. I wanted to say see, people who ascribe human characteristics to dogs strike us as being a bit fanciful, but people who do the same for data? How can a bunch of recognizable symbols embody smartness? I mean, data by itself, of itself, is dumber than a rock.

So why do we pretend that the information, knowledge and the smarts are in the data and that data itself, without the need for any intervention (other than Hadoop, Sparke or Hive, etc.), is capable of revealing this smartness?

And the only thing I can think is that we are so desperate to sell useless crap that no one needs or wants, that we are even capable of saying the most dopiest of things in order to do so.

Anyway, I was at a Big Data conference recently, and every presenter selling a tool made exactly the same type of pitch. The amazing ways that their tools could establish correlations. Some of the examples of the correlations were so contrived, so obviously the creation of PR than the outcome of hands-off automated analysis, that it became seriously embarrassing, not as a professional, but as a human being. What´s more, no one mentioned the absent elephantine concept of causation, so everyone who went in clueless stayed happy in their ignorance throughout the whole wham-bam-tank-you-mam dog and pony session.

Now, I do think that the sort of data processing associated with Big Data does have a place in the old IT toolkit, but the levels of hype, misappropriation and downright lies is seriously queering the pitch. Just look at some of the Big Data articles in places like Forbes, Information Management and LinkedIn. If you haven’t yet noticed the tendency to use tremendous volumes, varieties and velocities of bullshit to push the Big Data envelope, then you really haven’t been paying enough attention.

Many thanks for reading.

If you enjoy this piece or find it useful then please consider joining The Big Data Contrarians: https://www.linkedin.com/grp/home?gid=8338976

Many thanks, Martyn.