Big Data
The advent of cloud computing has meant that the data storage
capacity available to businesses and institutions has become
limitless. According to a 2011 IBM advertisement, 90 per cent of
the data in the world was created in the two years
prior.1 IBM estimates that 2.5 quintillion bytes of new
data are created daily.2 Just this year, The New
York Times reported that commercial rents in areas of New
Jersey are reaching $600 or more per square foot because of demand
from new data centres.3 These data centres, and others
like them around the world, are hosting vast data collections,
which have been popularly dubbed Big Data.
Big Data is the outcome of an electronically interconnected
world. Most of us connect with the electronic world frequently each
day. We pay with credit cards and debit cards, access online social
networks and use search engines. Our activities are recorded by
omnipresent cameras, both public and private, and uploaded to the
Internet. Our
