20160807 Essay 5: INTERNET

“Knowledge is power.” Francis Bacon, the father of scientific methods of inquiry, said this, which means the more one knows, the more one will be able to control events. In this modernized world where computer remembers much information, the meaning of “knowledge” have been extended from just our brain’s memorization to what information our computer has, and the information-gathering and the information-filtering capability are being much stressed. Thus, in our life, a huge cluster of data of the past histories, known as BIG DATA and used to analyze social phenomena, is now interpreted as “power” of Bacon’s quote. For the reason, I think the Internet, the network connecting computers, provides people with a lot of valuable information, most of which has its own special meanings contributing to improving the usability of BIG DATA analytics.

First of all, that information can make the analysis much accurate. Some people might insist we are having too much information on the Internet so that it confuses the interpretation of social veins. However, the purpose of BIG DATA analytics initially is finding hidden patterns of the information. And in the process, having much information, though it seems useless, can work as an important resource of understanding this human society. For instance, social network analysis(SNA), one of the BIG DATA analytics that investigates social structures among networks, seeks influencers of the social network services who give others certain impacts through statistical tools like graphs and use them in marketings. And in this method, any information relevant to the influencer, if proper range of searching keyword is set, can be appreciated by its value making the outcome of the statistics more exact.

Second, having much information contributes to increasing the ability to regard something in diverse perspectives. There is a Korean proverb that “The more you know, the more you can see.” So having much information can expand the view on an object. Thomas Edison, for example, was able to invent a lamp since he knew about 1000 different ways that can cause failure, resulting in getting rid of the number of cases. And in the process, he could grow his own knowledge and eventually find how he can make a lamp work. Computers of 21th century, which we live in, can help us know ways to fail much easier than Edison’s era, by analyzing their own information effectively by calculating.

In conclusion, I think the Internet is now offering valuable information that can attribute to the accuracy of the analysing statistics and the diversity of information. The Internet would provide us a new way of life, by analysing and showing many views in the world.