New Book Review: "The Evolution of Data Products"
New book review for The Evolution of Data Products: The Data that Drives Products is Shifting from Overt to Covert, by Mike Loukides, O'Reilly, 2011, reposted here:
While in my opinion this short white paper sized text is not as well written as other entries within the recently published O'Reilly Strata series on Big Data, similar in size to "Data for the Public Good: How Data Can Help Citizens and Government", by Alex Howard, I am ranking this work similarly to this text and others in this series, including "Big Data Now: Current Perspectives from O'Reilly Radar" and "Planning for Big Data: A CIO's Handbook to the Changing Data Landscape", because it helps complete the current state Big Data landscape.
After discussing data products that have replaced physical products, the author contemplates the question as to how the next step should be taken, where data recedes into the background. Loukindes proposes that the next step in the evolution toward data products are those which deliver results rather than data. In addition, the author expands on the idea outlined within the subtitle of this work, that data is shifting from overt to covert, by noting that while overt products tend to depend on overt data collection, not only is data invisible in the result with covert data products, but it tends to be collected invisibly because it has to be this way.
He furthers this thought by commenting that "it has to be collected invisibly: we would not find a self-driving car satisfactory if we had to feed it with our driving history. These products are frequently built from data that's discarded because nobody knows how to use it." Within his closing thoughts, the author quotes Eric Schmidt, currently executive chairman of Google, which he said "needs to move beyond the current search format of you entering a query and getting 10 results. The ideal would be us knowing what you want before you search for it".
The author follows up by writing: "This controversial and somewhat creepy statement actually captures the next stage in data evolution. We don't want lists or spreadsheets; we don't want data as data; we want results that are in tune with our human goals and that cause the data to recede into the background. We need data products that derive their power by mashing up many sources. We need products that deliver their results in human time, rather than as batch processes run at the convenience of a computing system. And most crucially, we need data products that go beyond mere recommendation to discovery. When we have these products, we will forget that we are dealing with data. We'll just see the results, which will be aligned with our needs."