CAN WE SEE BIG DATA?

We are increasingly collecting more and more data from devices which can give us invaluable information about how we consume products and services. With the Internet of Things (IoT) gathering pace, we will soon appreciate the enormous applications of Big Data in understanding and improving the benefits of our consumption. Science has always used models to help our brains to comprehend abstract issues and Big Data is one abstract issue. In a report on Science Alert, researchers have come up with a way to visualise Big Data so we can try to make better sense of it. They use Virtual Reality (VR) to give Big Data some shape and form. Visualising the data would help us to extract value to help us improve how we consume products that give us data on how we are using them.

Africa faces multiple challenges which are made even more challenging if they cannot be measured. As methods and interfaces of data collection become more ubiquitous, we need to be ready to embrace and benefit from Big Data because now we can even visualise it. Mobile phone penetration is quite high in Africa and most mobile devices could easily be used to collect data even from remote areas. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is estimated to have half a billion mobile phone subscribers by 2020. Considering the IoT, mobile phones will not be the only collectors of data. Even the forests will start giving us data about the ecosystem. The possibilities are endless but we need to have the correct mindset to embrace technological advances in Big Data. In fact the concept of Big Data largely depends on a new mindset which appreciates the advantages of a new way of looking at data with a view to improving things like energy consumption, how we deliver healthcare and education among other limitless possibilities.