Big data is revolutionizing our everyday lives. For example, it enables personalized marketing and real-time inventory management. But it also raises serious privacy concerns, which require legislation and corporate accountability to address.
Vacation episodes and big data
It’s been two weeks since my vacation started. Today, I woke up slowly and was surfing the web when my cell phone suddenly rang at 11:30. It was a coupon for a discounted lunch box from my favorite G-convenience store in front of my house. I was hungry at the time, so I thought it was a good idea and quickly went out and bought a lunch box. After eating my lunch, I went online to K-Books to order three books to read during my vacation. When I put all three books in my cart, I saw a book on the right side of the screen that I had wanted to read in the past but hadn’t gotten around to reading. I ordered a total of four books, including this one. Suddenly, my friend asked me to meet him for drinks at Gangnam Station at night. Normally, I would have said no because the subway was cut off at night, but I accepted because the new late-night buses drop me off close to my house. I don’t know who designed the late night bus route, but they did a great job.
The above situation is a common one for people these days. But behind the scenes, there’s a new technology that most people don’t know about. It’s called Big-Data.
What is big data?
Big data refers to the vast amount of short-lived data generated in the digital environment. It can be not only numerical data, but also text, images, and other forms of data. Using big data means creating value by analyzing the vast amount of data generated in the business process. Through analytics, you can build more efficient systems to increase sales, profit margins, and even predict the future.
The difference between statistical data analysis and big data is that statistical analysis in the past collected and analyzed the data needed for analysis, while big data does not collect data with a specific purpose, but all the data generated in the management process itself. Therefore, the difference in data volume is huge. Also, processing speed is an important issue in big data. In the case of inventory management, it is important to analyze and check the amount of inventory in real time. For these reasons, big data has been difficult to use in the past. The price of data storage disks was high, so not all the data generated was stored, and it took a long time to analyze the data. However, the development of the electronics industry has made it possible to store a huge amount of data at a low price and analyze it in real time.
Creating New Value from Big Data: From Business to Government
Google, a leading big data company, has been utilizing big data for a long time. Google famously identified the spread of the flu in the United States earlier than the CDC by analyzing the patterns of people searching for “Influenza” on Google. People search for remedies and medicines online when they show signs of the flu or know someone else who has it, so analyzing where and how much people are searching can reveal where the flu is spreading.
The personalized marketing of G-convenience stores and K-bookstores in Korea is one of the most famous examples of the use of big data. Based on the patterns of what you buy or browse, they recommend products that are related to it, or that people who have bought it have bought a lot of. If a grocery store offers a discount on bottled water to customers who frequently buy it, or recommends cheeses that go well with wine to customers who buy it, the store’s sales will increase.
Fast fashion company ZARA worked with MIT researchers to develop a system that analyzes sales and inventory information from stores around the world in real time. As a fast fashion company, ZARA relies on real-time trends and customer demand. Inventory was their biggest enemy. To manage inventory more efficiently, they adopted big data, and it worked.
Big data is not just about analyzing numbers. It can analyze text, images, and even video. Google Translate, a service provided by Google, uses pattern recognition to translate based on a large number of translated documents that already exist. This method is better than a computer recognizing words and translating them. It is still immature for Korean-English translation, but it can translate well between European languages with similar word order because it has a lot of existing translation data.
While big data is mostly used by businesses, there is a growing movement to use it in government. Last year, the Seoul Metropolitan Government analyzed 3 billion call volume statistics from KT from midnight to 5 a.m. to find areas with high nighttime activity, and based on that, it built new late-night bus routes. This case has gained popularity as an example of big data in the public sector. The Financial Supervisory Service has announced that it will use big data to build a “credit monitoring system” to prevent illegal loans at savings banks.
The rise of Big Brother?
Big data technology is not all good. There are concerns that big data will usher in the era of Big Brother. Big Brother, which appears in George Orwell’s futuristic novel ‘ 1984, is an administrative power that monopolizes information to monitor and control society.
In particular, the dangers of personal information collection and excessive surveillance by companies are being emphasized. For several years, opinions have been raised that Google, Facebook, and other big data companies are collecting and monitoring personal information excessively, and card companies and retailers that conduct customized marketing have also been criticized for excessive invasion of privacy. In addition, personal information leaks have been occurring frequently in the financial sector, and it is questionable whether it is safe for companies to collect and store personal information for big data analysis. This is because if the information is leaked due to a company’s weak information security system, it will cause serious social problems. In order to solve this problem, the laws and systems regarding the use of personal information that reflect public opinion should be well established. In addition, companies should not try to collect excessive information unnecessarily, and they should put more effort into information security. It is up to the government, society, companies, and us to decide whether big data will be good or bad.
