Schonberger, the father of big data: The Internet knows you better than you do

Professor of network supervision and management at the Network Institute of Oxford University. His research field is network economy. He once served as the director of the information governance research project at Harvard Kennedy School and the network governance project director of the Harvard National Electronic Commerce Research Center; he also served as the director of the Information and Innovation Strategy Research Center at Lee Kuan Yew College of the National University of Singapore. He also serves as a visiting professor at Yale University, University of Chicago, University of Virginia, University of San Diego, and University of Vienna.

More than 100 papers have been published in famous academic journals such as Science and Nature, as well as Harvard University Press, MIT Press, Journal of Communications Policy, American Journal of Sociology, etc. Featured commentator for several publications.

Information authority and consultant, consulting clients include the world's top companies such as Microsoft, HP and IBM. As early as 1986 and 1995, he served as the president and CEO of two software companies. In 1991, he ranked among the top 5 software entrepreneurs in Austria. In 2000, he was named the Person of the Year in Salzburg, Austria.

An information policy think tank at the top level of institutions and national governments, focusing on the research of information security and information policy and strategy. He is one of the EU experts and a consultant to the World Economic Forum, the Marshall Plan Foundation and other institutions. He has successively served as a consultant to senior officials from the Ministry of Commerce of Singapore, the Ministry of Defense of Brunei, the Ministry of Commerce of Kuwait, and the governments of Dubai and the Middle East.

Clothes that have not been worn for more than two years will be given away, and unsightly photos will be deleted immediately

Schonberg, the father of big data: The Internet knows you better than you do< /p>

Times reporter Han Wei from Shanghai

Schoenberg is coming to China again wearing his iconic John Lennon-style round glasses.

On September 25, Time Weekly will hold the 2015 "Influence·China" Autumn Summit, and Schonberger will be invited to attend and talk about big data, which he is best at.

In the past two years, this authoritative scholar in the field of data science has appeared in China every few months, and wherever he went, he was surrounded by media and readers.

The reason why Schonberger is famous in China is mainly because of his two best-selling books, the first work on big data - "Big Data: A Game that Will Change Our Lives, Works and... "Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think" (Chinese version also known as "Big Data Era") and "Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting" in the Digital Age). The former reveals the huge changes that big data has brought to mankind, while the latter attempts to explore how mankind should build a positive and secure future in the era of big data.

As the first data scientist to have insight into the development trend of big data, it is not surprising that Schonberger is sought after in China. After all, at this moment, China's State Council has just issued the "Action Outline to Promote the Development of Big Data", proposing the goals and main tasks to gradually realize the development and application of big data in the next 5-10 years. The domestic big data industry is ushering in a period of great development.

Because big data is so popular, in this new gold rush era, people’s interest in Schonberger no longer stops at his research, but also extends to him and the process of his series of academic achievements. .

As it happens, Schonberger is a person with interesting personality and rich experience. For example, he argued with his father for decades because he did not want to inherit the family business, and eventually embarked on an academic path.

Code Boy

"My mother used to run a movie theater. I would ask her every year, what was the best movie of the past year? She always said, I know, it was × ××. But she’s always wrong.”

Schoenberg often mentions this example in his speeches, although it is just to support the idea that most people need data analysis tools, but he inadvertently puts it. Much interest leads to his past.

This scientist who is now very famous in the field of global data science can actually be regarded as a "rich second generation". He was born in a small town two hours' drive from Mozart's hometown of Salzburg, Austria. His father was a local tax lawyer and had his own firm; his mother managed small movie theaters, flower shops and other businesses.

In 1966, the year Schonberger was born, his father bought the town’s first computer, which was expensive. At that time, everyone in the town thought he was crazy and would definitely go bankrupt. The humming sound of this huge personal computer accompanied Schonberger throughout his childhood.

As a child, Schonberger loved reading Astrid Lindgren’s fairy tale books. The late Swedish writer's most famous work is the imaginative Pippi Longstocking. At that time, Schonberger dreamed of becoming an inventor, because it was particularly tempting to turn ideas into reality.

"If I could still have lunch with Lindgren, I would like to ask her how she stimulates her imagination? Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge." Enberg said.

When he was studying, Schonberger's favorite subjects were physics and mathematics, and he was fascinated by computers. When he was eleven or twelve, he wanted to program on that humming computer.

“At that time, only universities had computers, so I went to the local university to sign up for a programming class. But the teacher thought it was impossible for me to learn it, so he asked me to play by myself. So, I studied by myself in the corner ." By high school, this talented teenager won prizes in the International Physics Olympiad and the Austrian Young Programmers Competition.

At the age of 17, Schonberger touched the net for the first time. At that time, he stumbled upon a voice coupler, which was nothing more than a rudimentary modem—the user had to connect a telephone receiver to it, thereby activating the transmission of data via voice transmission.

Before this, Schonberger had heard of the Internet, but had never experienced it. So, he tinkered for several months, spent a lot of money on phone bills, and finally connected to a radio communication website "The Source" that provided rudimentary email, forums and other commercial online services. Since then, Schonberger has been out of control and obsessed with the Internet.

In 1986, Schonberger, who was only 20 years old and had not finished college, started an "entrepreneurship" - established the anti-virus software company Ikarus and developed Virus Utilities, the best-selling software in Austria at the time. So far, Baidu Encyclopedia’s introduction to Virus Utilities says that this is a powerful anti-virus software. In 1991, the young Schonberger was also selected as one of the top five software entrepreneurs in Austria.

This experience as a programmer laid the foundation for Schonberger's future. Many years later, in the book "The Age of Big Data", Schoenberg wrote that a true data scientist is a combination of statistician, software programmer, graphic designer and writer.

Father and Son

On Schoenberg’s academic journey, a figure that is difficult to avoid is the father who bought the first computer in the town.

Schonberger’s relationship with his father was not bad. To this day, the detail about his parents that he remembers most is that after dinner every day, his father would patiently listen to him tell him what happened that day and some of his thoughts. Schoenberg believes that this is his father’s “superpower.”

However, his father never wanted Schonberger to think about how to become a computer scientist, although he accommodated his son's interest in computers. This well-known tax lawyer in the small town always persuades his children to finish studying law as soon as possible and inherit the family business. Schoenberg argued with his father for decades, until the latter's death, between inheriting his father's legacy and devoting himself to computing science.

When he was about 20 years old, Schonberger still obeyed his father and first studied law at the University of Salzburg in Austria. It is said that because law was so boring, this top student finished the 7-year course in 3 and a half years.

Then his father asked Schonberger to continue his studies in law, but the young man was unwilling, so he only applied to one school—Harvard. He felt that he would definitely not be admitted.

On the day he received the admission notice, Schonberger thought it was a friend joking, so he called the phone number on it and scolded him, "This is a stupid joke!" But a voice on the other end of the phone said, "No, this is Harvard. How can I help you?"

This is not the only time that Schonberger has "earned his fortune". In fact, for most of his student days, although Schoenberg was outstanding, he was not the best. But in his last school year, it seemed as if he suddenly had an enlightenment, and everything he had learned in the past suddenly "comprehended" it. So, to everyone's surprise, including his own, he got straight A's for the only time in his student career in the last exam before graduation.

At Harvard Law School, the oldest law school in the United States, Schoenberg began to feel that the law he studied was no longer as boring as it was as an undergraduate. Despite this, he still did not want to take over his father's company after completing his studies.

When a reporter interviewed Schonberger, he once asked, "Why did you become a university professor?" He said, "I always wanted to be an inventor, until my father kept 'forcing' me to take over the family business. When my father, who is a professional, asked me one day, what would I do if I didn’t want to be a tax lawyer, that’s when I decided to become a university professor. At least, for my parents, this would be a more acceptable and popular choice than an inventor. Respected work."

After graduating from Harvard, Schonberger received a Doctor of Laws from the University of Salzburg and a Master of Science from the London School of Economics. In accordance with his promise to his father, Got a teaching position at a London university.

At that time, Schonberger's father still felt a little lost in the face of such a situation, and finally passed away suddenly. The day after his father died, Schonberger chose to leave London, give up his career and academics, return to his home town, and work as a tax lawyer that he had rejected countless times before.

“My life, like most people, is both coherent and subject to twists and turns. I initially liked physics and mathematics, then became interested in computers, and then focused on data security and data encoding. And I fell in love with studying privacy law, intellectual property law, and Internet law. Following this path, data gradually became my focus, but my life was disrupted again and again.

For example, my father's death made me give up my original career plan and return to my hometown; but a year later, I sold my father's company and struggled to return to the academic circle; later, by chance, I was able to study at Harvard University and Kennedy School of Medicine. Teach at the college. In a sense, these twists and turns created unexpected difficulties for me, but they also brought unexpected opportunities. "Schonberger told the Times reporter.

The father of big data

Since 1998, Schoenberg's academic research has been on the right track. He entered the Harvard Kennedy School to teach , and spent 10 years there. After that, he worked as an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew Policy School of the National University of Singapore for three years, taking the opportunity to observe information policy in Asia, and now serves as a governance and research fellow at the Internet Institute of the University of Oxford. Professor of supervision.

In the past 10 years or so, the Internet has developed rapidly, and people have begun to use mobile phones to surf the Internet, chat, and shop, and complete many things that in the past had to be done offline, and these changes have been affected by Schonberg.

In 2010, at a seminar organized by Schonberger, almost all participants began to mention that the social operating model was undergoing some kind of change, but who I can’t tell what the essence of this change is. Kenn Cukier, the data editor of The Economist, was also at the meeting. He had just published an issue of “The Impact of Big Data.”

After that seminar, Schonberger had many in-depth conversations with Cukier, “Then we decided to co-write a book to explore the impact of big data on the present. meaning and the essence of the big data era."

In December 2012, "The Big Data Era" co-written by Schonberger and Cukier was published. This pioneering work on big data research is not only widely The media's praise has also greatly increased Schonberger's popularity.

In the book, Schonberger uses various examples to show the changes brought about by big data. For example, a company called Farecast has recently Ten trillion price records are used to predict the fare of domestic flights in the United States. As of 2012, the accuracy of fare prediction has reached 75%. Passengers who use the Farecast fare prediction tool to purchase air tickets can save an average of US$50 per ticket.

“The core of big data is prediction. It is often considered a part of artificial intelligence, or a type of machine learning. But in fact, this definition is misleading. Big data is not about teaching machines to think like humans. On the contrary, it is about applying mathematical algorithms to massive data to predict the possibility of things happening. ” Schonberger wrote.

In this book, Schonberger also put forward a widely cited point-big data is not about random samples, but about the entire data; it is not about accuracy. sex, but confounding; not causality, but correlation.

“Specifically, the purpose of big data is comprehensive data collection and analysis; at the same time, we must understand that in data quality and There has to be a balance between the amount of data, so 'not accuracy, but confusion' and 'not causation, but correlation', which makes us realize that causation no longer explains the world. Only logic. "Schonberger told a reporter from Time Weekly.

In addition, Schonberger was also the first person to advocate the commercial application of big data. In "Big Data Era", he pointed out that today's data has become It is a kind of commercial capital and an important economic investment that can create new economic benefits, and this is one of the reasons why he is often regarded as a guest by the Chinese who are vigorously promoting the development of the big data industry.

In addition to focusing on the value of data, another important area of ??interest for Schonberger is how to prevent data from being abused. In the book "Deletion: The Choice of Big Data" published earlier than "Big Data Era", Schonberger raised the biggest problem in the digital age: the Internet remembers things that people want to forget. When forgetting becomes the exception and remembering becomes the norm, human beings' ability to make rational decisions will be threatened. Therefore, in the era of big data. , everyone should enjoy the "right to be forgotten".

In fact, Schonberg himself established a set of life rules for himself early on about deleting items that have not been worn for more than two years. His clothes will be given away or disposed of; those photos that are not good-looking will be deleted immediately because, "If you don't delete them, in the digital age, the Internet may know you better than you do yourself."

< p>Schonberg’s novel ideas once opened the eyes of readers. But now, he told the Times reporter that his focus has turned to small drones. In fact, Schonberger has always been interested in them. I am very interested in aircraft driving and unmanned driving based on big data analysis. I just don’t know what kind of "imaginative" thinking this data scientist will bring to this issue in the future.

Conversation with Schonberger:

"As long as they do not abuse their power, there is no need to fight against the data oligopoly"

Times Weekly reporter Han Wei from Shanghai

On September 13, in an exclusive interview with a reporter from Time Weekly, Schonberger talked about some of his understanding of big data and the process of harvesting this understanding.

The person who has the most profound influence is the high school physics teacher

Times Weekly: This summer, the biographical film "The Imitation Game" based on Alan Turing was released in China, which moved many people. people. Have you seen this video? Alan Turing is the father of computer science. Did he influence your approach to data science research?

Schoenberg: I've seen this movie. In fact, many years ago, I read some of Turing's works. You may remember that when I was working in a software company, I needed to code, so I must read Turing’s book.

However, the person who influenced me the most was not Turing, but my high school physics teacher. He introduced me to the concept of entropy, relativity, quantum theory, etc. For me, it was like opening the door to a new world.

Times: Everyone considers you to be one of the most important data scientists today. I'm particularly curious, has big data brought changes to your daily life?

Schoenberg: I ??am a "big user" of big data services. Normally, I wear an Apple watch, which has always provided a lot of help to my health; I also like e-commerce companies such as Amazon, and I also often use Google Maps. In addition, Wikipedia has been a rare helper for me. It makes it easier than ever to obtain useful information, which has been of great help to me.

Times: This year I interviewed American economist Tyler Cowen, author of the best-selling book "The Great Stagnation". When talking about his views on big data, he told me, “Big data is overrated because most people don’t know what the data they hold is used for, and the same goes for businesses. Big data can help us It improves efficiency in some edge areas, such as targeted advertising, but it cannot change the overall situation. The most difficult thing is to ask the right questions and find the specific patterns behind the questions, and then use data to match them. This is very difficult to achieve. ."Do you agree with his point of view?

Schoenberg: I ??admire Tyler Cowen very much, and "The Great Stagnation" is a great book. I have also quoted some ideas from this book. But on the issue of big data, I think his view is wrong. Perhaps this is because this aspect is not the core area of ??expertise he studies.

Big data can reduce the harm of unfair resources

Times Weekly: Now, when most industries mention big data, they always say "this is an industry revolution that will subvert the past." . Do you think big data will really subvert those traditional industries?

Schoenberg: Yes, this disruption has already occurred and is proceeding rapidly. John Seely Brown, a former director of Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, has found that the lifespan of very large companies has been shortening over the past few decades. At the same time, we have seen that in recent years, Internet companies driven by big data and valued at tens of billions of dollars have continued to emerge. There is no period in human history where changes have occurred faster in more areas than today.

Times Weekly: Currently, there are three major Internet giants in China: Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, which respectively dominate the three fields of search, e-commerce, and social networking. They continue to absorb users’ online behavior data and are almost certain to Will become China’s data oligarch. Do you think there is a need for antitrust at the data level?

Schoenberg: I ??think it is necessary that the Internet remains open to new innovative subjects. As long as big companies don't abuse their power and drive smaller but better startups out of the market, they don't pose much of a threat. So, I'm more concerned about the actual behavior of these companies than their size.

Times Weekly: In addition to data, I know that you also have in-depth research on education issues. In January this year, you published a new book called "Walking with Big Data: The Future of Learning and Education", which specifically explores the application of big data research in the field of education, in order to truly achieve individualized teaching. The main problem in China’s education is the unfair distribution of educational resources. Can big data solve this problem?

Schonberger: Big data cannot fundamentally eliminate this unfairness. However, through big data, we can provide highly personalized education at a relatively low cost, thereby reducing this injustice. harm caused by unfairness. In other words, big data allows students to obtain customized education that is at least as good as a “private tutor” at a very low cost. Therefore, big data can become a game-changing factor.

The above is what the editor has shared with you about the father of big data, Schonberger: The Internet knows you better than you do. For more information, you can follow Global Ivy to share more information