In his article for the New York Times, Steve Lohr discusses a new wave of data-driven technology.
Our technology has surged from personal computers in the 1980s and the Internet in the 1990’s to smartphones that combine both of those technological milestones into one palm-sized device. So, what’s next?
New software will automate more tasks and help people make decisions. Ultafast databases will take advantage of rapid advances in computer hardware to help researchers find insights in the rising flood of data coming from many sources:
- -web browsing trails
- -sensor data
-genetic testing
- -stock trading
The hardware advance that makes machine-learning programs like Watson, the “Jeopardy”-winning computer and the movie recommendations on Netflix is the improvement of solid-state memory. Solid-state, or flash, memory is known by most of us as the storage technology used in our smaller devices like smartphones or music players. However, as Lohr states, this technology has now been adapted to be used in large computers, holding hefty databases in memory instead of sending data off to be stored on disk drives.
” All parts of the technology pipeline are gearing up at the same time, and that’s how you get this explosion of new application. But the software is scaling up to the task.” – Jon Kleinberg
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