The era of big data is upon us. Over the past 20 years, we have seen a huge increase in the amount of data that the world produces. And it continues to grow. IDC estimates (PDF) that the world will have 988 exabytes (988 billion gigabytes) this year. That’s a 4x increase since 2006, and a forecast of 57% CAGR moving forward.
And that’s just the beginning.
We can’t even yet conceive of the new uses of all of this information. But they are coming, and they will bring both problems and opportunities.