国際政治もビックデータの時代に

先ほどのシリアの件でフォーリンアフェアーズのサイトにアクセスしたときに以下のビックデータの記事が無料公開されていました。最新刊である5月／6月号のトップ論文にビッグデータを選んでいるということは、国際政治にまでインパクトを及ぼすということなんでしょうね。

といっても読者である国際政治学者たちがビッグデータに詳しいわけでもないでしょうから、このエッセイではビッグデータとは何か、国際政治にどうインパクトがあるのかということを分かりやすく説明してくれています。

The Rise of Big Data
How It's Changing the Way We Think About the World
By Kenneth Neil Cukier and Viktor Mayer-Schoenberger
May/June 2013

ちょくちょく書いていることですが「資格試験からの卒業」を考えている人には、5,000語から10,000語の長さのエッセイ、論文は読めるようになることを目標の一つに入れてもらいたいと思います。

Words checked = [4908]
Words in Oxford 3000™ = [88%]

Everyone knows that the Internet has changed how businesses operate, governments function, and people live. But a new, less visible technological trend is just as transformative: “big data.” Big data starts with the fact that there is a lot more information floating around these days than ever before, and it is being put to extraordinary new uses. Big data is distinct from the Internet, although the Web makes it much easier to collect and share data. Big data is about more than just communication: the idea is that we can learn from a large body of information things that we could not comprehend when we used only smaller amounts.

In the third century BC, the Library of Alexandria was believed to house the sum of human knowledge. Today, there is enough information in the world to give every person alive 320 times as much of it as historians think was stored in Alexandria’s entire collection -- an estimated 1,200 exabytes’ worth. If all this information were placed on CDs and they were stacked up, the CDs would form five separate piles that would all reach to the moon.

This explosion of data is relatively new. As recently as the year 2000, only one-quarter of all the world’s stored information was digital. The rest was preserved on paper, film, and other analog media. But because the amount of digital data expands so quickly -- doubling around every three years -- that situation was swiftly inverted. Today, less than two percent of all stored information is nondigital

出勤時間になってしまったので、動画を含めた詳しい内容のご紹介はまた改めて書かせてもらいます。