What is Big Data?
Is it really about technology where large data sets are being analysed by computers? Not exactly. It is the culmination of all the Organizational and behavioral theories being approached by Maths.
See one of the objectives of marketing has been The Issue of Choice, more like an issue of someone being able to control your choice without you realizing it, leading to you parting with your cash. The marketeer wants to modify your behaviour. He wants you to like the brand, leading to a particular action which in some simple steps leads to profit. Traditionally this is known as AIDA model.
This requires a certain amount predictability on the marketeers side to gauge your response to stimulus as a collective . Which means the message A will Lead to action X and message B will lead to action Y. The variable here is CHOICE. The consumers inalienable right to choose.
Since 1920's this has led to a lot of research in psychology to find the inherent reasons behind choice. An attempt to understand the Black box and reach answers like, emotional responses supercede logical responses. Most of the creative people are still trying to follow and decipher this Black Box called Mind. Some things which will be universally liked and responded to. And the learnings now go into advertisements, movies, speech writing, Politics, product design and all the creative processes, where one product has to suite many people.
In such a scenario, the goal is maximization of acceptance. This means that it is understood that not everyone will be influenced, but as long as a profitable majority of the population is affected by the creative product, its viable. Therefore a Hit movie, a moving speech, a good advertisement, an iPhone are products which were successful to get a favorable response to the message in larger percentage than others.
Some science has crept into this process by focus groups, with a small population set to put some data behind creativity. People realized that one person saying "yes" is choice, many people saying "yes", is a market.This also led to the development of customer demographics and targeting.
As population grew and products became specialized, it became important to market it only to a certain set of people. With growing population, it became possible to cater to a small set of people and still achieve the economy of scale to break into profit.
Science and creativity really mixed with the coming of computers. It is virtually a mind, but that runs on materials science & mathematics. Computers are actually machines that mimic the mind (for now) and as the mimicry becomes complex and accurate, it sometimes becomes difficult to separate the original and the fake. You might say that Brain also is a computer but a biological one, and i wouldn't dispute your argument, but would just say that the process of learning is different.
So as i was saying, as science and maths entered the creative realm, the natural progressive question was, How many demographics actually exist in a population? Are we missing any? Is there a Gap? and someone came back with the answer x^n. If population is X and the number of dimensions being looked into is n, then there are X*X*X*....X(n times) demographics. But that is very vast. Also some of these demographics and psychographics might sit too close together and might not be useful at all. So what is a good answer. Then it dawned. The best estimate of demographics in a population is
Is it really about technology where large data sets are being analysed by computers? Not exactly. It is the culmination of all the Organizational and behavioral theories being approached by Maths.
See one of the objectives of marketing has been The Issue of Choice, more like an issue of someone being able to control your choice without you realizing it, leading to you parting with your cash. The marketeer wants to modify your behaviour. He wants you to like the brand, leading to a particular action which in some simple steps leads to profit. Traditionally this is known as AIDA model.
This requires a certain amount predictability on the marketeers side to gauge your response to stimulus as a collective . Which means the message A will Lead to action X and message B will lead to action Y. The variable here is CHOICE. The consumers inalienable right to choose.
Since 1920's this has led to a lot of research in psychology to find the inherent reasons behind choice. An attempt to understand the Black box and reach answers like, emotional responses supercede logical responses. Most of the creative people are still trying to follow and decipher this Black Box called Mind. Some things which will be universally liked and responded to. And the learnings now go into advertisements, movies, speech writing, Politics, product design and all the creative processes, where one product has to suite many people.
In such a scenario, the goal is maximization of acceptance. This means that it is understood that not everyone will be influenced, but as long as a profitable majority of the population is affected by the creative product, its viable. Therefore a Hit movie, a moving speech, a good advertisement, an iPhone are products which were successful to get a favorable response to the message in larger percentage than others.
Some science has crept into this process by focus groups, with a small population set to put some data behind creativity. People realized that one person saying "yes" is choice, many people saying "yes", is a market.This also led to the development of customer demographics and targeting.
As population grew and products became specialized, it became important to market it only to a certain set of people. With growing population, it became possible to cater to a small set of people and still achieve the economy of scale to break into profit.
Science and creativity really mixed with the coming of computers. It is virtually a mind, but that runs on materials science & mathematics. Computers are actually machines that mimic the mind (for now) and as the mimicry becomes complex and accurate, it sometimes becomes difficult to separate the original and the fake. You might say that Brain also is a computer but a biological one, and i wouldn't dispute your argument, but would just say that the process of learning is different.
So as i was saying, as science and maths entered the creative realm, the natural progressive question was, How many demographics actually exist in a population? Are we missing any? Is there a Gap? and someone came back with the answer x^n. If population is X and the number of dimensions being looked into is n, then there are X*X*X*....X(n times) demographics. But that is very vast. Also some of these demographics and psychographics might sit too close together and might not be useful at all. So what is a good answer. Then it dawned. The best estimate of demographics in a population is
Number of Demographics in Population = Population itself = each individual is one demographic
We called it Personalization. When a product or service is made specifically for you as per your own choice. A product that reflects your individual demographic and psychographic. A product as similar, or as Unique as you are in this world.
Something that was being done in services since ages. When you got a haircut, or ordered a food, it was as you wanted (theoretically). It is possible that two people might ask the same order, but theoretically you could just have 3 strands of hair removed and have the most unique haircut in the world.
But that doesn't happen in real life, people's choices can often be grouped together. When you look at all the individual choices that people make in a barbershop, you can see that they will fall under a particular bell shaped curve. Some choices really rare, and others made more often and similar. It is a result of sharing this world and the experiences that come with it.
Till now, these individual choices could only be studied using grouping, which simplified things and works on maximization rather than accuracy. This meant that we could only gather data and analyze it in the broader sense on a population or group level. But as computing is becoming cheaper, keeping a track of these choices and making a truly personalized product is increasingly becoming possible. And this chunk of data, a set of all those choices you made, is BIG DATA.
There is an issue with Freedom to Choose. We think that we make unique choices. But thats not true. Because to choose, you can only choose freely, when you have infinite things to choose from. If you are choosing from a finite set, the number of choices have already been limited to a finite set. You are actually choosing freely from inside the finite set. Ever had to make a choice between the Devil and the Deep blue sea? Will that choice be called a free choice?
So if the set of choices you make in an instance is finite, we can always assign a probability of that choice happening. When you stack a set of choices in sequence, we can still calculate the probability. However, it becomes a little difficult to do so. But if you have cheap computing, its mighty easy. Because its too difficult for an ordinary mind to calculate, it gives us an illusion of freedom. But in actual its is pretty much pre-determined.
In my opinion, If you have a large enough data set for a system to learn from, and enough time and computing power, you can actually predict an entire person's or human race's future. (theoretically, and i know it may sound absurd, but its true)
In the above scene with architect, this is what the architect shows in his multiple screens. After every question, you see all these screens, with all the Neo's, with all the possible things that Neo can say, and then Neo says one thing.At no point, Neo can say anything, thats not already thought out or expected. There is never a blank screen.
This sequence of choices is what makes us feel that our life is unique. it gives us an illusionary sense of purpose and meaning. But if you really had a free choice, you would have kept trying to burn your hand again and never modify your choice based on previous outcome. You would have exercised your freedom. You would give up smoking the next cigarette once you realized that this choice was not good.
When we change choices based on previous experience, we call it learning.
When we keep on making bad choices, and not learn from experience, its addiction.
Ever seen a Mad man. He does something. And we can be pretty sure that it must be making sense to him, and we can be pretty sure that he is exercising his freedom to choose as well. Then whats wrong there? His set of actions are not following the rules of addiction or learning or predictability.
If BIG DATA keeps on expanding and becoming all pervasive, we might stop thinking at one point. What happens when a system becomes really good at predicting your choices. And what happens when it keeps on giving you a set to choose from, which is exactly the kind of set you wanted to choose from. After sometime, you will learn, that if the system is telling you it works.
In sometime, all you need to do is say, i need blue shirt. And the system will know what kind of shirt, what shade of blue, what size. All pretty much decided for you. And you will love the first 500 times its right, and then you will accept it as right.
Next, all you will do is ask for a blue shirt, and buy what the system predicts. But then, how will you try out something new. Something that is truly unique or different.
How will you change your choices, when all that is being offered is a set of products based on your previous choices?
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