Toward evolving knowledge ecosystems for big data understanding

Big Data is a phenomenon that leaves a rare information professional negligent these days. Remarkably, application demands and developments in the context of related disciplines resulted in technologies that boosted data generation and storage at unprecedented scales in terms of volumes and rates. To mention just a few facts reported by Manyika et al. (2011): a disk drive capable of storing all the world’s music could be purchased for about US $600; 30 billion of content pieces are shared monthly only at Facebook (facebook.com). Exponential growth of data volumes is accelerated by a dramatic increase in social networking applications that allow nonspecialist users create a huge amount of content easily and freely. Equipped with rapidly evolving mobile devices, a user is becoming a nomadic gateway boosting the generation of additional real-time sensor data. The emerging Internet of Things makes every thing a data or content, adding billions of additional artificial and autonomic sources of data to the overall picture. Smart spaces, where people, devices, and their infrastructure are all loosely connected, also generate data of unprecedented volumes and with velocities rarely observed before. An expectation is that valuable information will be extracted out of all these data to help improve the quality of life and make our world a better place.