Entering the Age of Big Information

• Posted: Saturday, March 11, 2006
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• Author: pradhana

Thornton A. May

FEBRUARY 20, 2006 (Computer World) - Historians will ultimately come to a consensus on what to call the days between the frenzy that was the dot-com bubble and the period we are now on the cusp of entering. I call this brief blip (1995-2005) the Age of Little Information.

I come to this label not because the age exhibited a lack of information. Quite the contrary; it was during this period that information -- previously locked away in analog form -- became widely digitized. All this newly digitized data had little impact on behavior, however.

We learned to our lament during this era that digitized information doesn't necessarily mean managed or acted-upon information. We are now exiting an era of undermanaged and only-occasionally-acted-upon information and entering the Age of Big Information, a more active, intense and aggressive era, in which we will be held much more accountable for our data management behaviors. In the Age of Little Information, we were data vegetarians. In the Age of Big Information, we will have to become knowledge carnivores.

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