Good evening everyone! I hope you have all had a wonderful week!
This week on the Art of Strategic Communication, I want to take a minute to talk to you all about Big Data in the world of technology and 5G Networks as they are being introduced to our current technology.
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| Photo by Joshua Sortino on Unsplash |
To start off, let's talk about Big Data. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Big Data can be defined as "an accumulation of data that is too large and complex for processing by traditional database management tools."
In this case, many of us have encountered Big Data without even realizing it. For example, if you have a smartphone you have an internal hard drive within the phone that allows you to store a certain amount of data on the phone. Then, you also have access to several different external servers, also known as "cloud servers." As we continuously upload content, we are actively contributing to the clutter of Big Data being added to our servers. Every one of our social media posts, text messages, phone calls, and google searches are recording data that is being collected by huge online servers. While we may never see this data again, it would be foolish of us to assume it was gone forever.
At this point, the amount of data being uploaded each day continues to grow every day. In fact, EMC Corporation released the EMC-sponsored IDC Digital Universe study, titled "Extracting Value from Chaos" in 2011 talking about how quickly the internet is evolving. In the study, it was discovered that the world's information is more than doubling bi-yearly. They went on to say that in 2011, there would be 1.8 zettabytes worth of new information and content added to the Big Data currently present.
If you're anything like me, you instantly thought..."What is a zettabyte?" Well, great question. I asked the same thing. The article goes on to describe it like this:
"In terms of sheer volume, 1.8 zettabytes of data is equivalent to:
Every person in the United States tweeting 3 tweets per minute for 26,976 years nonstop
Every person in the world having over 215 million high-resolution MRI scans per day
Over 200 billion HD movies (each 2 hours in length)—would take one person 47 million years to watch every movie 24x7
The amount of information needed to fill 57.5 billion 32GB Apple iPads.
With that many iPads we could:
Create a wall of iPads, 4,005-miles long and 61-feet high extending from Anchorage, Alaska to Miami, Florida.
Build the Great iPad Wall of China—at twice the average height of the original
Build a 20-foot high wall around South America
Cover 86% of Mexico City
Build a mountain 25-times higher than Mt. Fuji
The forces behind this relentless growth are driven by technology and money.
New "information taming" technologies are driving the cost of creating, capturing, managing and storing information down to one-sixth of what it was in 2005. Additionally, since 2005 annual enterprise investments in the Digital Universe—cloud, hardware, software, services, and staff to create, manage, store and generate revenue from the information—have increased 50% to $4 trillion (USD)."
So, as you can tell, Big Data is extremely BIG data (McGaughey, 2011). Knowing that much data was being collected in 2011 makes me nervous, so I can only imagine how much that number has increased since then. Every online interaction we have is being recorded. For example, my Google Maps application sent me a notification Friday morning suggesting that I would arrive at work by 7:15 a.m. if I left by 6:43 a.m. I did not set this notification as a reminder, but Google recognized the common theme in my schedule and decided to remind me anyways... Have any of you experienced anything similar?
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With more information, comes slower upload/download times—right? Wrong. As technology continues to evolve, so does the bandwidth and innovation of transmission speeds! Over the past couple of years, the term 5G has been introduced to us all as we continue to purchase the newest smartphones available to us. Since the beginning of technology development, I have watched as 2G turned into 3G, 3G to 4G, and now I am experiencing the lag time in my cell service in rural Alabama as the 4G swaps over to 5G coverage.
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| Photo by Shiwa ID on Unsplash |
5G service is supposed to be 100x faster than the 4G service we are all used to. This means that download times will be virtually nonexistent for small files. Large files will only take a small fraction of the time to download that they took on the 4G network (Lockington, 2019). This means that more Big Data will be able to be sent into the online servers at a fast pace. As technology advances, we will not see Big Data die off; however, we will experience it evolve into even larger data. Who knows... It may eventually turn into artificial intelligence. With programs like Siri and Alexa, the opportunity for growth is endless.
The only issue I see coming up with the transition to 5G is the lack of fiber optic cables that are near me in rural Alabama. 5G is great for faster speeds; however, it covers smaller areas per cable. This means that service providers will have to update their towers to allow the network to run at its full potential. Since April of this year, my family and I have been experiencing very severe lagging in our cell service with Verizon Wireless. We did not have any problems with this provider for years until they announced that they would be installing the brand new 5G towers.
At the very least, we assumed we would still see moderate 4G coverage; however, we were terribly wrong. There are many areas in my hometown where our service goes out completely now. While we have looked into changing providers, a lot of our friends are having the same issue with the other companies. After speaking with an employee, I was told that one of the fiber optic wires had been cut when they were trying to replace it. Knowing that the 5G network does not extend far past its specific coverage area, it makes sense as to why this would have such a negative impact on our cell service.
Why do we continue to pursue the biggest and best next new thing? Why can't we be content with what we have? Personally, I believe it is refreshing to see people striving for greatness. Technology has created a brand new world experience for all of us, and while the unknown is scary—I am excited to see where technological innovations take us next. What are you most looking forward to? Let me know in the comments!
Lockington, S. (2019, February 13). The Future of 5g: What Will the Impact Be? Interconnections - The Equinix Blog. https://blog.equinix.com/blog/2019/02/13/the-future-of-5g-what-will-the-impact-be/.
McGaughey, K. (2011, June 28). Worl data more than doubling every two years driving big Data Opportunity new IT Roles. Dell Technologies | Corporate. https://corporate.delltechnologies.com/en-us/newsroom/announcements/2011/06/20110628-01.htm.
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Big Data. Merriam-Webster. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/big%20data?utm_campaign=sd&utm_medium=serp&utm_source=jsonld.
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