Big Dating

Another thing Big Data is going to change is dating. First of all, a computer will be able to profile you VERY well based on everything it knows about you. It will then be able to match you up with the person who is most perfect for you. Dating will be LESS common and marriage will be MORE common. Some day, your children will be able to find their soul-mates in the time it takes you to blink and your grand-children will ask you if it's really true that people used to waste roughly a decade dating random strangers and friends of friends.

Another way Big Data will change dating is with facial recognition software. As I said, Big Data will allow computers to know you better than you know yourself. You will have at least one online profile based on all the available information about you. you might have a public profile and a private one, but you will have at least one. But I digress. A potential mate will be able to take a picture of you and will then be able to access your public profile and know a lot about what kind of person you are. Perhaps more than you want them to know. But that door swings both ways. Hopefully, this will help you know if you've found the one you've been looking for or if there's a good chance the person sitting across from you had their last date chained up in the basement at home.

Until then, keep rolling those dice at the speed-dating tables.

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The Oracle

What's going to happen when Big Data analysis can predict the future? What are the advantages of knowing the future? Perhaps the biggest advantage - other than being able to prepare for natural and man-made disasters - would be the ability to make money in the stock market. Average middle-class workers will be able to invest in the stock market with little or no risk if Big Data can tell them which stocks will rise and which will fall. Will everyone get rich? Will this level the playing field in the financial world and lead to an economic equilibrium?

This will partly depend on how specifically the future can be predicted. I think, at first, the predictions will be relatively general, but as we gather more and more data and develop more and more sophisticated ways of analyzing it, our predictions will get more and more specific; especially once that analysis is done by a quantum computer. It won't be long before this oracle will have to factor ITSELF into its predictions and a kind of singularity will be reached. Who knows what will happen then?

On the other hand, if computers get really good at predicting the future, it will mean fewer surprises. Not NO surprises; but fewer. That can be good if the predictions are bad, but many will miss the spontaneity life will have lost. Part of what makes life so much fun is its ability to surprise us.

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