The Columbian Exchange is a term used to capture what happened to North American Native Indians when the arrival of European settlers introduced ideas, animals, plants, and diseases that otherwise they had not yet been exposed to. Today, the Modern Columbian Exchange is occurring at a global scale, caused by unprecedented global travel and the Internet. An outcome of this Modern Columbian Exchange is disease outbreaks which have and will continue to affect dozens of countries in a very short time, impacting agriculture, tourism, and ultimately resulting in social tensions and the loss of life. The global response requires tight and timely coordination across countries. This necessitates the processing of large volumes of data – “BIG DATA” – which implies variety, variability and velocity. In this presentation, we explore the challenges of BIG DATA for preventative global health care. We answer the questions: a) how can human intelligence be more effectively leveraged to develop new insights, and b) how does this impact the design of data and information repositories? We conclude “The Time is NOW” for a new real-time analytics paradigm to transform the discovery and learning process.
4. What is The Modern Columbian Exchange?
These challenges, characterized by complexity and Big
Data, threaten our physical, mental and social well-being.
BUT!!! This crisis also offers a great opportunity to
leverage human intelligence using “Big Data” to better
manage our circumstance
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5. Why Human Intelligence?
…because it is our best resource to tame complexity
although we have limitations….
• Experience-dependent
Categorization /
Functional Fixedness
• Cognitive Bias
• Working Memory
• Lineal thinking
BUT “…every move we make that constrains complexity also blocks off
opportunity”. (Stafford Beer, 1979)
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Technology: How is China displacing Germany and US in solar technology?Ways of Thinking: How is the nuclear tragedy in Japan transforming in France and Germany the public perception about the safety of nuclear plants?Lifestyles: How expectations about the role of the women in society are define in different cultures?Animals: How are pitons invading the Everglades in Florida?Plants: How are perceived GM seeds as a solution or a threat by different communities?Diseases: How was Sars quickly distributed around the world?
“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. WHOIncreased connectivity between humans, humans and machines and between machines create a web a relationships that generate counterintuitive behaviors and turning points enable through feedback loops and delays existing within the system .Now Big Data can leverage Natural human intelligence to manage and tame this interconnectedness! Big Data are the fuel of the Idea economy. Today we are just starting to extract their energy and value.The harvesting of the energy and value of “Big Data” poses societal challenges such as: (McKinsey, 2011): A 40% projected growth in global data generated per year;5% growth in global IT spending140,000-190,000 “data scientists” needed.
On the other hand Human Intelligence has three very unique attributes:Creative imagination leveraged by the values of sciences described by Dr Ismail SerageldinCommon sense leveraged by experience andWisdom and ethic leveraged by the listening of our inner voice“Science sans conscience n’estqueruine de l’ame” PasteurThere is a key distinction between the finding of sciences that are grounded in observed facts and the application of these scientific findings which are grounded in the intention of the decision maker. This intention is what manifests the wisdom and ethic of the decision maker.“Between the scalpel of a surgeon and the knife of an assassin there is just a difference of intention”.
Big Data can help to respond in an accurate and timely way to prevent loss of life, and lifestyle, including property, possessions, health, and community. Especially when resolving a new threat. Traditional databases are challenged to effectively and efficiently extract the value of Big Data. The leverage the value of Big Data today we want to be able to:Associate information in real-time: Define and support complex, high dimensionality problems – immediately understandingwhat is connected with what, when, where, how and how much;Recognize pattern integrating structured and unstructured data: Quickly adapt to the complexity of the situation and the life-impacting concerns. We want decision support systems that can learn in real time;Support team work:Bridging multiple experts across multiple domains to share information and learning is critical for timely coordinated success;Find relevant small data in Big DataThe occurrence of ‘one’ can be significant for understanding. The real-time nearest neighbor reasoning is a powerful approach to leverage human intelligence;Scalability to massive network of networksWhen dealing with coordination across multiple regions or countries, scalability becomes a key concern.
Signs and Symptoms demonstrating the limitations in the current use of Big DataThe decision making process is not visible just as the root of a tree, although we know the root system underground supports the health of the branches that are visible. The effectiveness and efficiency of our decision making can be expanded with the exploitation of big data just as a tree with healthy root system can better access available nutrients to manifest to the fullest its essence.
To harvest the value of Big Data and transform the static paradigm of “accumulated Information” into a dynamic paradigm of “actionable knowledge for a specific purpose”,we want to answer these two questions.Today we witness a metamorphosis of what our explicit knowledge now is:Multimedia “including text, voice, image, video, virtual reality” instead of written in stone or in a book.Dynamic instead of static.Systemic instead of a simple lineal cause and effect relationship.Specific “we speak about actionable knowledge” within a specific context instead of generic “how to”.
Christopher Columbus in 1492 didn’t just sail the ocean blue. He launched an ecological revolution. The same Vint Cerf, the recognized intellectual father of the Internet, started a knowledge revolution including its impact through social media.Until 200 years ago, because the amount of knowledge was limited, the analysis and synthesis of it was straightforward and accomplished without much use of tools. Now that the amount of knowledge is many orders of magnitude larger than what we can assimilate and memorize, it becomes a requirement for effective decision making to use tools in order to select relevant information, and tools to help analyze and synthesizing the information. When people were using oars, they were at the mercy of the wind. Square sail technology appeared around 1200 B.C. It was very good for downwind sailing, acting similar to a parachute. Triangular fore-and-aft sails made their earliest appearance in 3 A.D. and essentially harvested the wind with the same principle as lift for airplanes. They improved upwind sailing ability and speed. Christopher Columbus combined technologies providing speed and maneuverability. Today associative memories enable us to ingest data with no need to predefine the question we want to answer and use different reasoning methods to extract in real time relevant “actionable knowledge”.
There are several proven and tested technologies that can address these challenges. One technology which we observe to be especially relevant is based on Associative Memories. In this approach, similar to how the human brain works, a ‘memory’ is created for every entity. There may be a memory of a given expert, a memory for a given procedure, etc. In Associative Memories, each observation is recorded with its context – what is the connection of this memory with other memories, in what context, and how many times was this observed? This forms then the basis of a true, real-time knowledge–store against which a variety of reasoning methodologies can be performed. This technology represents a significant opportunity to harvest and tame the power of “Big Data” in a way that is coherent with human cognition.
We propose that the platform of the future will leverage the advancement of sciences and technology, speeding the cycle of observing, orienting/learning, deciding, and acting