大数据英文阅读

Building with big data 数据时代

The data revolution is changing the landscape of business 数据革命正在重塑商业格局

IN A short story called “On Exactitude in Science”, Jorge Luis Borges described an empire in which cartographers became so obsessive that they produced a map as big as the empire itself. This was so cumbersome that future generations left it to disintegrate. (“*I+n the western deserts, tattered fragments of the map are still to be found, sheltering some occasional beast or beggar.”)

博尔赫斯在短篇故事《关于科学的精确性》中写道：帝国的制图者们如此偏执，以至于绘制了一幅与帝国面积同等大小的地图。这副地图毫无实用价值，帝国的后人们最终将其丢弃，任其腐烂。（“在西部的沙漠中，地图的碎片不时可见，有些已经变成了野兽和乞丐的庇护所。”）

As usual, the reality of the digital age is outpacing fiction. Last year people stored enough

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data to fill 60,000 Libraries of Congress. The world’s 4 billion mobile-phone users (12% of whom own smartphones) have turned themselves into data-streams. YouTube claims to receive 24 hours of video every minute. Manufacturers have embedded 30m sensors into their products, converting mute bits of metal into data-generating nodes in the internet of things. The number of smartphones is increasing by 20% a year and the number of sensors by 30%.

数字时代的发展已经远远超过了人们的想象。人们在去年一年存储的数据足以塞满6万个国会图书馆。地球上的40亿手机用户（其中12%为智能手机用户）夜以继日地生成着新的数据。Youtube声称每分钟能接收到（用户上传）的视频内容时长达24小时。制造商们在他们的产品中植入了3千万个传感器，将各种本来相互孤立的设备转化为物联网中的一个个数据节点。智能手机和传感器的数量正分别以每年20%和39%的速度递增。

The McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) has no Borges-like qualms about the value of all these data. In a suitably fact-packed new report, “Big data: the next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity”, MGI argues that data are becoming a factor of production, like physical or human capital. Companies that can harness big data will trample data-incompetents. Data equity, to coin a phrase, will become as important as brand equity. MGI insists that this is not just idle futurology: businesses are already adapting to big data.

麦肯锡全球研究所（McKinsey Global Institute ，以下简称MGI）对如今的巨量数据持正面态度，丝毫没有博尔赫斯式的担忧。MGI在其最新报告《大数据：创新，竞争和生产力的下一个前沿》中指出：数据正日益成为与实物资本和人力资源同等重要的生产要素。善于利用数据的公司将在竞争中占据先机，数据价值的重要性将日益与品牌价值比肩。MGI坚称，这不是空洞的未来学，商业活动正逐渐适应充斥海量数据的新环境。

Companies are assembling more detailed pictures of their customers than ever before. Tesco, a British retailer, collects 1.5 billion nuggets of data every month and uses them to adjust prices and promotions. Williams-Sonoma, an American retailer, uses its knowledge of its 60m customers (which includes such details as their income and the value of their houses) to produce different iterations of its catalogue. Amazon, an online retailer, has claimed that 30% of its sales are generated by its recommendation engine (“you may also like”). The mobile revolution adds a new dimension to customer-targeting. Companies such as America’s Placecast are developing technologies that allow them to track potential consumers and send them enticing offers when they get within a few yards of a Starbucks. 公司对顾客的了解愈加细致，这是过去从未有过的。英国零售企业乐购（Tesco）每月可以收集15亿条珍贵的信息，并据此来调整价格和进行促销。美国零售商威廉姆斯一索诺玛(Williams-Sonoma)利用已有的6000万顾客的信息（包括他们的收入和房屋价值）来拟定不同版本的销售目录。网络商城亚马逊（Amazon）声称他们30%的销售收入来自于名为“you may also like”的推荐引擎。移动通信革命催生了崭新的目标客户营销手段。在美国，Placecast和类似公司正在开发新的技术，以帮助他们来定位潜在顾客，并在他们接近商户时向其发送具有吸引力的广告。

The data revolution is disrupting established industries and business models. IT firms are nosing their way into the health-care market: Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault both allow consumers to track their health and record their treatments. Manufacturers are hastening their transformation into service companies: all those sensors allow them to monitor their products and see if they need repairing long before they break down. BMW uses sensor-data to tell its customers when their cars need to be serviced, for example. Insurance firms can now monitor the driving styles of their customers and offer them rates based on their competence (or recklessness) rather than their age and sex.

数据革命正给各行各业和已有商业模式带来冲击。IT公司正将他们的触角伸向保健领域——人们已经能够通过Google Health和Microsoft HealthVault提供的服务来跟踪自己的健康状况并保存医疗记录。制造商们正加速转型为服务商——产品中植入的传感器使得厂商能够监控自己的产品，以及时对其进行修理。宝马就是其中之一，该公司通过监控传感器数据，即时提醒客户对车辆进行维护。通过数据监测，保险公司现在能够监控投保人的驾驶习惯，从而可以根据其行为模式——而非性别或年龄——来制定差别化的保险费率。

This revolution is changing government, too. Tax authorities are getting better at spotting spongers (for example, by flagging people who claim unemployment pay as well as occupational-injury benefits). Health services are mining clinical data to gauge the cost-effectiveness of drugs. After a detailed study of its clients, the German Federal Labour Agency managed to cut its annual spending by

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