Big data in China

Chapter 9 The Great Transformation Opportunity for the World in the Big Data Era (3)
It has become a relatively difficult thing to quickly and accurately find the information you need most from the vast amount of information.At this time, while people are extremely thirsty for information, they are also suspicious of information.Because even if we look at the information 24 hours a day, I am afraid we will not be able to read it all.What's more, there are a lot of useless and untrue information, and the sources of information are also uneven.They are growing far faster than we can comprehend, and they are pouring into our lives from all directions.

Information overload is mainly manifested in five aspects:
1. News information is increasing rapidly, and it is gradually becoming real-time, that is, we can see live reports of events happening on the other side of the earth as soon as possible.

2. Entertainment information is overwhelming, and it is difficult to distinguish true from false.

3. Advertisement information is full of life, all over every corner, and updated rapidly.

4. Scientific and technological information is increasing rapidly, and the speed of scientific and technological progress exceeds the speed of people's comprehension.

5. Personal receptivity is seriously "overloaded", and people are suffering from information overload every day, which leads to a series of problems, and also triggers the big data revolution, because we need an effective tool to help process information.

☆ Sources of Overdose Information
1. The speed of the spread of science and technology has increased, so that information that has not been discovered or cannot enter the human field of vision before can be quickly displayed in front of us today.For example, now we publish hundreds of thousands of books every year. While promoting the aging of knowledge, we are also accelerating knowledge updating and wider dissemination.Driven by new communication technologies, the global production of printed information doubles every five years.In the past 5 years, the information produced by humans has exceeded the sum of the past 30 years.

2. The "out-of-control dissemination" caused by poor information management has produced a large amount of useless and false information, resulting in the pollution of the information environment and the generation of "information garbage".For example, on the current online platform, anyone can express their opinions freely and at any time, and the cost paid is almost negligible.Then everyone becomes a global information publisher and data producer.On the one hand, this facilitates people to obtain information from different channels, on the other hand, it also increases the difficulty for people to use information, because it is difficult to distinguish true from false.

3. Viruses can produce erroneous data or misleading information, and can also create a large number of junk files and consume people's energy.

4. The same event has different descriptions and reflections from different angles and perspectives, resulting in a large amount of similar but differentiated information.Although these information point to the same thing, the content may be quite different, which makes it difficult for information users to grasp the "truth" and indulge in contradictions among these different information sources.

5. Unhealthy information, such as pornographic websites and hacker sites, and information publishing platforms with bad purposes.

☆Big explosion of data—too many to measure
No one can say exactly how much information there is, because today's forecasts and statistics will be updated at a faster rate tomorrow.We create new data all the time from work to life every day. Various industries and institutions are constantly collecting, transmitting, and storing huge amounts of data every day. The amount of data in the world will double every two years. In the future, it may be several Doubling in months or even days (this is bound to happen, and it will happen soon).The excessive amount of unquantifiable data has made people offset the requirements for data quality, and they will feel that they can always find what they need with so much information, but this may not be the case.

Professor Victor from the University of Oxford said: "The information is only a phantom of the truth. More data will not lead us to discover more truth. On the contrary, it will only lead to more data and more questions. Although excessive Data can increase our insight, allowing me to find the 'what', but not necessarily the 'why'."

Victor believes that big data is the biggest revolution in human society since printing. A series of changes triggered by excess data have changed our work, life and thinking.With the development of related technologies, the data correlation and analysis technology, which was originally limited to intelligence agencies and large enterprises, will become more and more popular and applied in various fields of commerce, administration, science, and medical care, making the analyzed data the most valuable. assets.

The quantity of data is not equal to the quality of data, so the data must be organized and analyzed after collection.Because of the scattered, unstructured, unplanned, and unfixed purpose of data sources, no matter how much data there is, if it is blindly used for specific goals, it will inevitably lead to problems of lack of quality.

Only after rigorous and logical sorting, analysis, and correlation can it be used as the basis for prediction.Just like Dangdang analyzes your preferences before it can recommend books you may like, Baidu analyzes your search habits before it can display advertisements that you may be interested in on the search results page.Whether it is the police department's patrol arrangements for crime-prone areas, the insurance company's risk prediction, or the meteorological department's judgment on the weather conditions in the next 15 days, they are all the results of a large amount of data analysis.

☆ Adverse and beneficial effects
Information overload can also lead to information scarcity.From a quantitative point of view, information overload refers to the emergence of massive amounts of information due to the advancement of communication technology and the gradual liberalization of the communication environment, which provides "raw material" support for big data technology.However, due to too much information and the limited ability of the audience to distinguish, the most needed information cannot be obtained, and the real demand for information cannot be met, resulting in information scarcity.This kind of scarcity is relative, and the audience is at a loss in the face of the massive amount of information mixed with fish and dragons.Really valuable data is overwhelmed by a large amount of junk information.

The actual situation is that, on the one hand, we enjoy the convenience brought by rich information, but on the other hand, we suffer from the data explosion. After all, not everyone has the demand for big data technology and the need for massive data. .But in order to deal with the negative impact of information overload, we still have to improve our ability to process and analyze information to improve our decision-making efficiency.In the long run, it is very necessary, even at some high current costs.

The global industrial chain is facing major adjustments

In a management class, someone asked me to explain what an industrial chain is, especially a global industrial chain.Because people hear and see this word every day, but few people can explain its connotation clearly in easy-to-understand words.

☆Basic concept of industrial chain

Industrial chain is a concept in economics. Simply put, there are two keywords, one is division of labor and the other is authorization.It is a chain-like connection formed objectively between various industrial sectors (different companies in the same industry) based on certain technical and economic connections, and based on specific logical relationships and time-space layout relationships.It is a concept that includes four dimensions: value chain, enterprise chain, supply and demand chain, and space chain, thus forming a stable docking mechanism, like an invisible hand, to regulate the role of each link in the industrial chain.

In the industrial chain, there are a large number of upstream and downstream relationships and exchanges of mutual value. The upstream link transmits products or services to the downstream link, and the downstream link feeds back information to the upstream link.For example, Apple designs products and provides services (after-sales), and the foundry is authorized to produce products for it and feed back relevant information. In this chain, it constitutes a basic configuration from high-end to low-end to users.

In essence, this is an enterprise group structure with some kind of internal connection, which has both structural attributes and value attributes.The authorizing party is always on top, and the authorized party is always on the bottom.

☆The nature of the division of labor in the global industrial chain

The essence of the global industrial chain is the international division of labor.Of course, it is not determined by lottery, but the role of each country is distinguished according to the level of national strength, technology and competitiveness.

The current international distribution tool has two main features:
1. The international division of labor is dominated by strong countries and their large multinational companies, while weak countries and small and medium-sized enterprises are in a passive and dominated position.This will of course lead to an imbalance in the distribution of development benefits among countries around the world.For example, many foreign trade companies in China can only engage in processing and assembly, and work the hardest, but only get less than 10% of the total profits, and the rest of the profits are taken by multinational companies.Just like a piece of Nike brand clothing, China's authorized clothing companies carry out OEM production. If the total profit of a piece of clothing is 100 yuan, the Chinese company can only get 10 yuan, and 90 yuan is taken away by the authorized party Nike (what is it? Nothing to do, just authorization).

2. Production and consumption are separated, and the amount of trade is also separated from the actual benefits obtained, which leads to the imbalance of international payments in relevant countries (mainly the countries in the middle and lower reaches of the industrial chain), further plundering profits and widening the gap. Consolidate the high-end and upstream positions of powerful countries and multinational companies in the industrial chain.

The essence of this division of labor is that the strongest is king, and whoever owns the technology and intellectual property rights controls the rules.In the process of production globalization, with the large-scale and profound adjustment of the global industrial structure, developed countries continue to accelerate their own industrial upgrading and optimize the growth mode, and then their own industrial structure is upgraded to the direction of knowledge-intensive, technology-intensive and service-intensive , Enhanced its own industrial competition and technological advantages.At the same time, the production capacity is transferred to developing countries, and the two become a global shared production model, similar to the cooperation between the boss and the wage earners.

到今天为止，世界范围内已经完成三次产业转移。分别是20世纪五60s美国把淘汰的钢铁、纺织等劳动密集型产业转移到日韩等国；20世纪七80s日、韩、美等国将劳动密集型产业转移至东南亚发展中国家；20世纪八90s随着中国的改革开放，欧洲及美日等发达国家又将劳动密集型企业转移到了中国的东南沿海，就是我们常说的长江和珠江三角洲地区。

☆Industrial Transfer: Opportunities in China

Now, the industrial transfer is still going on.In the past ten years, with the continuous deepening of economic globalization, the upgrading of information technology and the arrival of the era of big data, a new wave of industrial transfer has gradually formed, and some new trends have emerged.

First, driven by multinational corporations, the scale of international industrial transfer continues to expand.For example, by 2007, the total amount of global foreign direct investment had increased to US$1.83 trillion, reaching a peak.The scale of direct investment has expanded, and the pace of industrial transfer will also be faster.In other words, in the international division of labor, the advantages of technology are becoming more and more obvious.

Second, the ways of industrial transfer are more diversified, and the fields involved are also wider.For example, the current industrial transfer is different from the traditional transfer 30 years ago - the labor-intensive, capital-intensive, and technology-intensive gradient transfer - in that the two ends of the industrial chain, namely R&D, manufacturing, sales, and service The various value-added links in the value chain are transferred, the boundaries of industries are becoming more and more blurred, and the degree of integration of different industrial links is getting higher and higher.In particular, cross-border mergers and acquisitions and reorganizations in the service industry have increased, and the information industry has become the top priority of the industrial development of a powerful country.

Where are the opportunities for China?At present, China has become the largest industrial country in the world. Our economic rise comes from the transfer of manufacturing from the West. The rise of China is also part of the process of global industrial transfer.In contrast, the main developed countries in the West have experienced the phenomenon of industrial hollowing out.At the same time, with the advent of the era of big data, the manufacturing industry has returned to the center of the industrial structure and has become a new important growth force.

☆Breakthrough: big data is a weapon of the country
Big data not only means a data analysis technology, but also represents an upgrade of intellectual property rights.China's advancement to the high end of the industrial chain is inseparable from big data technology. It must also rely on its relatively complete industrial system and latecomer advantages to develop its own big data industry and integrate information industry and manufacturing in order to be latecomers in the international division of labor game. Go beyond.

Time goes back 20 years. Since the 20s, the development of Internet technology has allowed the production process to be easily entrusted to OEM companies outside the borders. Therefore, the "offshore outsourcing" model has rapidly developed into a huge global system.At that time, China's small and medium-sized enterprises became the largest contractors of global offshore outsourcing, and assumed a role of accepting outsourcing.This is the middle and lower end of the chain.

How to break through this chain and climb upwards?This depends on new intellectual property and technology.Because it is not "who produces" that determines the profit distribution in the industrial chain, but "who controls the standard".Standard makers are also technology owners and licensors. They can "intellectualize" the standard itself, and then form a set of rules that maximize its own interests.

The core bottleneck that China needs to break through in its further development—industrial upgrading, is actually a question of how to make China's own production chains match each other.Big data technology undoubtedly provides China with such an opportunity, that is, to occupy new high-end, formulate "Chinese rules", and carry out industrial division of labor in line with China's interests under the new rules.

(End of this chapter)