Big Data, What Is It, Its Limits and Implications in Contemporary Life

Abstract

This paper summarizes the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on the issue of big data in the contemporary world in terms of what big data is, how it functions, how it can be leveraged towards the common good and what limitations can prevent it from transforming its power to a springboard for development and growth. The main purpose of the research is to get a first grip on what big data is and its implications positive or negative to our world. Under this prism, the author of this paper tries to encapsulate in this literary analysis some of the many ways that big data can help us in many industries like the health and care, insurance etc. and to underline the importance of its handling due to severe confidential data breaches, like in the case of the U.S. last elections. Systematization of literary sources and approaches for solving the problem of big data’s limitations indicate that big data need to be handled with extreme care and caution. As sensitive personal information is involved, the companies which use big data in order to understand their customers’ approach and way of thinking towards them in order to increase their sales funnel, need to handle it in a very cautious way, especially when they outsourcing that procedure to third party companies. This paper presents the results of an in-depth literary analysis on the subject, which showed that big data is undeniably an important part of our societies and that it has specific characteristics (i.e. speed, volume etc.) which make its analysis a quite challenging procedure, which needs to involve new techniques like data mining. The results of the research can be useful for the researcher of the future in terms of examining the connection between big data, artificial intelligence and personal information. This subject is critical and needs to be addressed in a coherent way as the advent of artificial intelligence and machine learning will arise new issues on how intelligent machines will handle personal information in the years to come.