As part of my job,I recently had to attend a demo session on Big Data to understand the scope of the technology. Before attending the session,I did some research and what I learnt convinced me that this was a concept that was misunderstood by a vast section of the population who had labelled Big Data as “irrelevant and hogwash” because they did not understand its scope.The whole idea of sifting through tons of data using advanced algorithms is enough to put off any non-technical user who is bogged down by the idea of coding.

Though Big Data does require an understanding of coding,the possibilities of its application are enormous . Big Data is not just about ‘sifting’ through tons of data;it is about making sense of unstructured data elements like videos and images.

The amount of time it would take to view videos/images on a subject to arrive at a conclusion is drastically reduced with Big Data in the equation. If you have ever read “Freakonomics ” and thought it was an amazing piece of work that required intensive research across multiple references,you are right. With Big Data at their disposal, writers could possible spend a lot less time on research (I am not trying to discount the effort put in by the authors of “Freakonomics”.The vision to select a seemingly unrelated source of data and derive insights is an art by itself). The key is to define what you are looking for.

That is what Big Data is all about–Insights.

Bloggers and writers who want insights could probably use Big Data in a manner that has not been fully explored so far.

Let’s see what the future holds.