data availability | The Fourth Revolution Blog

What the Different Maturity Stages of Big Data Analytics Are

It is increasingly trendy to speak about ‘Big Data’ and ‘data analytics’.

I like to use a framework to assess the maturity of what people are speaking about. This allows to understand what level of ambition we are discussing, because there is often some confusion.

Stage 0: reporting (of current processes – include more or less elaborate indicators)
Stage 1: comparison / benchmarking (with other similar processes, present or past)
Stage 2: correlations (establish data correlation between data series)
Stage 3: causation (more difficult than correlation, establish a causation link through root cause analysis etc.)
Stage 4: simulation (use the deep understanding gained in the previous stage to predict what will happen in slightly or very different conditions; and use the result to ascertain if the understanding is correct)

Stages 1 to 3 require ‘Big Data’ or at least the availability of a large number of series that can be observed for comparison, correlation and causation. In a lot of instances I have also observed people jump from stage 2 to 4, which we know is very dangerous as the bigger the data set, the more probable we can observe spurious correlations (see for example for fun the previous post ‘How We Will Need Specialists to Make Sense of the Authenticity of Big Data Correlations‘)

This simple framework can be very powerful to refer to when dealing with Big Data – do not hesitate to use it!

How to Become Quickly Better than the Best Experts

Also described by James Altucher as the ‘Tony Robbins Method‘:

at first you don’t know anything.
you find 5 people who are the experts in the world.
you extensively interview them.
you figure out the most simple things they have in common with each other.
you do that simple thing over and over and over and over (repetition).

Actually that is a great recipe to be even better than an expert in much less time – because you will thus figure out something none of those best experts had figured out as a key finding in their field.

Ready to try?

Hat tip to James Altucher in his interview with Tony Robbins about his new book

How the Rate of Evolution Increases Dramatically Right Now

We have mentioned several times in our book and posts how information generation is evolving exponentially. Another statistics: “According to a calculation Hal Varian, an economist at Google, and I made, total worldwide information has been increasing at the rate of 66 percent per year for many decades.” – says Kevin Kelly in ‘What Technology Wants‘. Refer to the the exponential deception to really understand what that means!

“Compare that explosion to the rate of increase in even the most prevalent manufactured stuff —such as concrete or paper— which averages only 7 percent annually over decades” Kevin Kelly continues.

But the most astonishing is not that. The most astonishing is that we seem to evolve much quicker as well: “Today, according to research on the mutations in our DNA, our genes are evolving 100 times faster than in preagricultural times“. Evolution is also quicker!

We are part of the system that evolves, and our evolution pace also quickens – although not as quickly as the world around us.

How Scientific Publishing Gets Deeply Disrupted by the Fourth Revolution

Scientific Publishing – the system whereby scientific papers are peer reviewed and published by specialized publishers, is being deeply transformed by the Fourth Revolution. “Watch This Multi-Billion-Dollar Industry Evaporate Overnight” says Dylan Tweeney on a post, describing how open publishing and reviewing is profoundly revolutionizing the scientific paper publishing industry.

scientific paper and journals published by a handful of intermediaries - soon a thing of the past? — Scientific paper and journals published by a handful of intermediaries – soon a thing of the past?

One of the main issues for the interested dabbler in science is that it is almost never possible to access important scientific papers without paying significant fees. I am not a scientist, merely an interested member of the public, and this barrier is a barrier to spreading knowledge in the wider society. And more – why would a small number of publishers benefit when most writers and peer-reviewers do the work for free? Scientific publishing sometimes looks like an oligopoly held by a few entrenched publishers.

Sites like Academia.edu propose to change fundamentally the balance of power in this industry, and basically to wipe out the intermediaries – publishers – which added value is now squashed by the internet. In their latest blog post about reaching the bar of 10 million users, the founder states “It would be a great thing if we could get every science PDF ever written on the internet, available for free. There is a lot of work to do before we make that vision a reality, but this 10 million user milestone is a good start”. A good start – we can already predict that within a few years, the entire system for producing, reviewing and making science available will be transformed for the better of humankind!

Reunited with his Family 26 Years Later: Another Testimony of the Power of the Fourth Revolution

“Everything is at the tap of a button, but you need to have the will and the determination to wanting it“. This is the final quote from Saroo Brierley in this great video. It is a true story of an small Indian boy lost in India, adopted by an Australian family (he also adopted the accent!) and finally figuring out where he came from through his recollections and long searches on Google Earth. The fact that Google used the story to advertise their products does not change the inspiring nature of the story

The full story of Saroo Brierley is accessible on in this long and emotional article on Vanity Fair, ‘A Home at the End of Google Earth’.

We now have at our fingertips much more power than we realize. Power to discover and observe the world in a way that was not available a few years ago. Power to find our way in the world, by ourselves. It is available. We just need the determination. What if we used that power as we could?

How Collaborative Age Moguls are Taking Over Press Media

One of the most astonishing trends in the past few years and months is to see successful Collaborative Age entrepreneurs getting involved in the media business through investment in major newspapers and associated news outlets (while at the same time the newspaper industry revenues and profits are in severe decline with the advent of content marketing).

bezos-buys-washington-post Last August, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post. No-one is really sure why. In France, in 2010, Xavier Niel, probably the most visible internet entrepreneur in France, participated in the buying of Le Monde, a major newspaper, and seems to be currently looking forward buying another major media outlet.

Of course, billionaires buying newspapers is nothing new. It has always been a way to seek influence, and sometimes has served as a launch pad for a political career. As usual, the buyer swears that he will not influence the editorial line of the paper, but while that might be true on the short term, it will definitely influence it, broadly speaking, on the longer term.

Previous newspaper buyers and owners had more created their fortunes from mining, commerce or industry and the fact that internet-based company billionaires are in the game reflects their new prominence among the wealthy and powerful. Also, the positive side is that in the middle term this new ownership might change the viewpoint and stance of the press in a more positive view of Collaborative Age economy, and support the societal change that are required.

Indirectly, these investments are good for the business of these entrepreneurs as it will support the mindset change that is needed for society to embrace the Collaborative Age.

How to Unleash the Power of Connectional Intelligence

“In our new world of an embedded digital infrastructure that connects all of our lives, the power of connectional intelligence holds exponential, and previously untapped, potential for breakthroughs in ways we can barely begin to imagine” writes Saj-Nicole Joni in ‘Win Big by Unleashing Millennials’ Connective Intelligence‘.

She continues “Connectional intelligence is your ability to make breakthroughs by connecting ideas, people, information, and resources. You use CxQ whenever you sift through multiple sources of information to put pieces of a puzzling problem together in new ways. It’s in your ability to build and realize value from networks of relationships, in your ability to convene communities, to marshal a various of resources to focus on a result, and to make diversity and differences productive.”. According to her, people with high connectional intelligence have always existed – but now it is much easier and much more widespread than ever before.

So, how much do you develop and exploit your connectional intelligence in your daily practice? If you do not – at least consciously – it looks like a good time to go at it – and enter the Fourth Revolution world in a more active way!

Why Perfectionism Kills Schedules; and Reasonableness Saves Them

“Perfectionism kills schedules; reasonableness saves them” is a quote from Gerald M Weinberg in ‘More Secrets of Consulting‘. I find that this is pretty true from any project, be it personal or professional, be it small or large.

It is always a constant battle to keep people from the decreasing yields of additional analysis, workflow definition etc to keep to the 80% of information that is really needed to take the right decision and move on.

It is possibly the fear to take a decision that drives most of us to be excessively perfectionist in gathering all possible data, when the issue and the possible solution is already visible for a long time. And this problem does not improve in our age of Big Data and possibilities of unending data mining!

Fight perfectionism and excessive analysis. Be reasonable, overcome your fear, and act.

How to overcome the 5/ 15/ 80 rule

The 5/ 15/ 80 rule states that “we enter any given assignment knowing 5 % of the relevant information. A further 15% of the information is that which we know we don’t know. And the 80 represents the 80% of the relevant information that we don’t even know we don’t know” (from Jon Steel in ‘Perfect Pitch‘).

pixelization — Much information is missing, we can still see the overall picture!

While the first 5+15=20% of the issue is not so scary (we always enter a new assignment with information we know we must seek), the remaining 80% is probably much scarier. This “black matter” will have to be uncovered, piece by piece – that is, if we manage to realize that there is stuff our there we don’t even know we don’t know.

It is similar to the usual cycle of learning: the transition from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence is probably the toughest because it sometimes requires us to overcome our filters and beliefs.

Does it really matter? We can recognize patterns even with only a little bit of information, such as the enclosed picture shows. Thus, provided there is a pattern we can recognize, poor information is not an issue. That is, if our experience and the patterns we have formed over time are relevant.

The issue is maybe not the quantity of information, but to seek if there is any that contradicts the pattern we would expect. If that is the case, it is a sure indicator that there is some stuff out there we don’t know. And then we need to search.

How to Better Understand the Hardware Movement Through a Novel: Read ‘Makers’ by Cory Doctorow

I had an excellent read with ‘Makers’ by Cory Doctorow. Cory Doctorow hovers generally somewhere between science-fiction author and defender of free collaborative work over internet. His fiction books are never too far from what could happen in our societies.

In this semi-fiction book, Cory Doctorow imagines what will happen in the world when the capability of 3D-printing and of toying around with all the available electronics will allow decentralized goods production. This leads to severe battles between large companies that can be regarded as real institutions and a loose network of creators.

Of course as always Cory Doctorow tends to support the idea of networks of disinterested creators in the vein of open-source. Still this book explains very well what could happen in a few years’ time if the hardware movement continues its development up to the point of upending significant existing organizations.

Apart from its entertaining aspect I recommend this book to better understand the current transformations of the world. And amazingly this book was originally published in 2009!

I also strongly recommend “Little Brother” by Cory Doctorow, his best seller so far, about how the state could implement a deep surveillance bordering to a police state. Quite premonitory in view of the NSA scandals.

How to Overcome the Struggles of Unstructured Collaborative Organizations

There has been lately some noise about the transformations of the organization behind Wikipedia, and in particular how the ecosystem of volunteers is changing dramatically, and not necessarily for the best – shrinking considerably, becoming more closed, more conservative and defensive of established positions.

An excellent article on the matter – although a bit long – appeared in the MIT technology review: ‘ The Decline of Wikipedia‘.

Wikipedia can be considered as an interesting experiment of unstructured organizations that will be increasingly typical of the Collaboration Age. And the way the Wikipedia foundation reacts to the challenge – by changing the software platform that supports this collaboration in a way that conforms to its goals and interests – is an interesting management response to this problem. Instead of dealing with people in the organization, they act on the very platform that supports their activity!

All in all, in spite of all the issues described in the recent studies on the Wikipedia phenomenon, it seems more that Wikipedia is maturing as an organization rather than a fundamental crisis. Faced with increased bureaucracy it needs to reinvent itself to achieve a stable and sustainable model. And it still needs, and will continuously need, a lot of editing as the cartoon on the left suggests!

Let’s continue to watch Wikipedia and how it faces its challenges to learn how to make the self-organizing communities of the Collaborative Age work better.

So Many Interactions Happen During One Second on the Internet!

Have a look at the great infographics by Designly on what happens in one second on the internet (please scroll down to feel the real size of the interaction!).

60-second-on-internet — Follow the link in the post the infographics is much, much better!

As the site reminds us:

10 years ago Skype, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr, Dropbox, and Instagram didn’t exist.
20 years ago there were only 130 websites total, Google wasn’t even around yet, and you had to pay for an email account through an ISP.
30 years ago there was no internet.

WOW. Worth a reminder. Still awesome.

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