"Big" data is something of a misnomer. It's colossal. From the beginning of recorded time until 2003, we created 5 billion gigabytes of data. In 2011 the same amount was created every two days. By 2013 that time will shrink to 10 minutes. The amount of information we take in in a single day is more than someone living in the 16th century would view in his entire lifetime.
The book from which this excerpt is drawn, The Human Face of Big Data, is created by Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt.
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