Sch?nberg, the Father of Big Data: The Internet Knows You Better Than You

Professor of Network Supervision and Management at the Network Research Institute of the University of Oxford, with a research area of network economy. He has served as the head of the Harvard Kennedy School's information regulation research program and the head of the Harvard National Center for Electronic Commerce Research's network regulation program; he has served as the director of the Center for Research on Information and Innovation Strategies at the Lee Kuan Yew School of the National University of Singapore. He has also been a visiting professor at Yale University, the University of Chicago, the University of Virginia, the University of San Diego, and the University of Vienna.

More than 100 papers have been published openly in prestigious academic journals such as Science and Nature, and he is also a contributing reviewer for a number of publishers, including Harvard University Press, MIT Press, the Journal of Communication Policy, and the American Journal of Sociology.

Information authority and consultant, consulting clients include top global companies such as Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM. President and CEO of two software companies as early as 1986 and 1995, among the top 5 Austrian software entrepreneurs in 1991, and named Person of the Year for the Austrian state of Salzburg in 2000.

Information policy think-tank for top officials of institutions and national governments, specializing in information security and information policy and strategy, one of the experts of the European Union, and a consultant to the World Economic Forum and the Marshall Plan Foundation, etc. He has served as a consultant to top officials of the Ministry of Commerce of Singapore, the Ministry of Defense of Brunei, the Ministry of Commerce of Kuwait, and top officials of the governments of Dubai and the Middle East.

More than two years of unworn clothes will be given away, and photos that don't look good should be deleted immediately

Sch?nberg, the father of big data, said the Internet understands you better than you do

Times reporter Han Wei was sent to China from Shanghai

Sch?nberg is coming to China again wearing his trademark John Lennon-style round glasses.

On Sept. 25, Sch?nberg will be invited to speak about his specialty, big data, at the 2015 Influence-China Fall Summit hosted by the Times.

In the last two years, the leading scholar in data science has been appearing in China every few months, and wherever he goes, he is surrounded by media and readers.

Sch?nberg's fame in China is largely due to his two best-selling, pioneering books on big data -- Big Data :A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think, and the Chinese edition of the book, Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think. , Work, and Think (also known as The Age of Big Data in Chinese) and Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age.) The former reveals the huge changes brought by big data to human beings, while the latter tries to explore how human beings should build a positive and safe future in the era of big data.

As one of the first data scientists to gain an insight into the development trend of big data, it's not surprising that Sch?nberg is sought after in China. After all, at this moment in China - the State Council has just issued the Outline of Action for Promoting the Development of Big Data, proposing to promote the development and application of big data in the next 5-10 years to gradually realize the goals and major tasks. The domestic big data industry is ushering in a period of great development.

And because big data is so hot, in this new gold rush era, people's interest in Scheinberg no longer stays in his research, but also extends to himself and the process by which he gained a series of academic achievements.

As it happens, Scheinberg is a man of interesting character and rich experience. For example, he had a decades-long battle with his father over not wanting to follow in the family footsteps, and ultimately pursued a career in academia.

The Code Boys

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

Sch?nberg often brings up this example in his speeches, albeit only to back up the idea that most people need data analytics tools, but inadvertently drawing a lot of people's interest into his past.

The scientist, who is now one of the world's most prestigious names in data science, is actually a "rich kid. He was born in Salzburg, Austria, a small town two hours from Mozart's hometown, to a local tax attorney with his own firm and a mother who ran a small movie theater and florist business.

In 1966, the year Sch?nberg was born, his father bought the town's first computer, which came with a hefty price tag. At the time, everyone in town thought he was crazy and would surely go broke. And the hum of the huge personal computer running accompanied Scheinberg throughout his childhood.

As a child, Scheinberg loved reading Astrid Lindgren's children's books. The late Swedish author is best known for the imaginative "Pippi Longstocking" books. And at the time, Scheinberg dreamed of becoming an inventor because, well, making ideas come to life is a particularly tantalizing thing.

"If I could still have lunch with Lindgren***, I'd like to ask her how she stimulates her own imagination. Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge." Schoenberg said.

As a student, Scheinberg's favorite subjects were physics and math, which led to a fascination with computers. By the age of 11 or 12, he wanted to program with the buzzing computer.

"At the time, computers were only available at universities, so I went to the local college and enrolled in a programming class. But the teacher didn't think there was any way I could learn it, so she let me play with it on my own. So I taught myself in the corner." By high school, the gifted teenager had won prizes in the International Physics Olympiad and the Austrian Young Programmers Competition.

At age 17, Scheinberg touched the Internet for the first time. He was given an acoustic coupler, which was actually a rudimentary modem - the user had to connect a telephone handset to it to activate the transmission of data by voice.

Before then, Sch?nberg had heard of the Internet, but had never experienced it. So he tinkered with it for months, racked up a huge phone bill, and finally connected to "The Source," a radio communications Web site that offers rudimentary online services such as e-mail, forums and other business services. After that, Sch?nberg was hooked.

In 1986, Sch?nberg, who was 20 years old and had never finished college, started his own business - Ikarus, an antivirus software company - and developed Virus Utilities, one of Austria's best-selling software programs at the time. To this day, the Baidu encyclopedia describes Virus Utilities as a tough antivirus program, and in 1991, the young Sch?nberg was named one of Austria's top five software entrepreneurs.

This experience as a programmer set the stage for Scheinberg's future. Many years later, in the book "The Age of Big Data," Scheinberg wrote that true data scientists are a combination of statisticians, software programmers, graphic designers and writers.

Father and son

One figure who was hard to get around on Scheinberg's academic journey was his father, who bought the town's first computer.

Sch?nberg's relationship with his father was not a bad one. To this day, the detail he remembers most about his parents is that every day after dinner, his father would listen patiently as he recounted the day's events and some of his thoughts. Sch?nberg felt that this was his father's "superpower".

But his father never wanted Sch?nberg to think about becoming a computer scientist, though he accommodated his son's love of computers. The small-town tax attorney was always urging his children to finish law school early and follow in the family footsteps. Sch?nberg argued with his father for decades between following in his father's footsteps and pursuing a career in computational science until the latter's death.

At the age of about 20, Sch?nberg still obeyed his father, first taking a law degree at the University of Salzburg in Austria. It is said that because law was so uninteresting, the schoolteacher struggled to finish seven years of reading in three and a half years.

Then, his father asked Scheinberg to continue his education in law, but the young man was reluctant and gamely applied to only one school-Harvard. He felt sure that he would not be accepted.

On the day he received his acceptance letter, Scheinberg thought a friend was joking and called the number on it to rebuke, "This is a stupid joke!" Instead, a voice on the other end of the line said, "No, this is Harvard. Can I help you?"

This isn't the only time Scheinberg has been "thick as thieves". In fact, for much of his student life, Scheinberg was brilliant, but not the best. But to the last school year, he was like a sudden enlightenment, the past has learned things suddenly "integrated". Still, he didn't want to take over his father's firm when he finished.

A reporter interviewing Scheinberg asked, "Why did you become a college professor?" He said, "I always wanted to be an inventor, and it wasn't until my father, who had always 'pushed' me to take over the family business, asked me one day, "If you don't want to be a tax attorney, what do you want to be?" that I made up my mind to become a college professor. At least, for my parents, it would be a more acceptable and respectable job than inventor."

After graduating from Harvard, Scheinberg went on to get a J.D. from the University of Salzburg and an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and, in keeping with a promise made to his father, secured a teaching position at a London university.

Sch?nberg's father, who was still feeling a bit lost in the situation, died suddenly. The day after his father's death, Scheinberg chose to leave London, give up his career and academics, and return to his home town to work as a tax attorney, which he had previously rejected countless times.

"My life, like most people's, has been both coherent and at the same time subject to repeated ups and downs. I began with a love of physics and math, moved on to an interest in computers, which led to a focus on data security and data encoding, and to a love of studying privacy and intellectual property law, as well as cyberlaw. Following this path, data gradually became the focus of my attention. But my life was disrupted again and again. For example, my father's death caused me to abandon my original career plans and return home; but a year later, I sold my father's company and struggled to get back into academia; and then, by chance, I was able to teach at Harvard's Kennedy School. In a sense, these ups and downs created unexpected difficulties for me, but also brought unexpected opportunities." Schoenberg told the Times.

Father of Big Data

Sch?nberg's academic research has been on track since 1998. He joined the faculty at Harvard's Kennedy School, where he spent 10 years. After that, he spent three years as an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public ****policy at the National University of Singapore, where he took the opportunity to observe information policy in Asia, and now he is a professor of governance and regulation at the University of Oxford's Internet Institute.

In the past 10 years or so, the Internet has grown by leaps and bounds, and people have begun to use their cell phones to surf the Web, chat, shop, and do many of the things they used to have to do offline. And these changes have been documented by Scheinberg in treatises one after another.

In 2010, at a seminar organized by Sch?nberg, almost all the participants began to mention in their speeches that the way society functioned was changing in some way, but no one could say what the substance of that change was. At the time, Kenn Cukier, the data editor of The Economist, who had just recently done a special issue on "The Impact of Big Data," was in the room.

After that workshop, Scheinberg and Cukier had many in-depth conversations, "and then we decided to co-author a book on what big data means for the present and the nature of the big data era."

In December 2012, Sch?nberg and Kukier co-authored The Age of Big Data, which was published. The pioneering book on big data research was not only well-received by the media, but also gave Sch?nberg a huge boost in popularity.

In the book, Scheinberg shows the changes brought by big data through various examples. For example, a company called Farecast predicts fares for domestic flights in the U.S. using nearly a trillion price records. As of 2012, fare predictions were 75 percent accurate, and travelers who purchased tickets using the Farecast fare prediction tool saved an average of $50 per ticket.

"At the heart of big data is prediction. It's often seen as part of artificial intelligence, or a form of machine learning. But in fact, that definition is misleading. Big data isn't about teaching machines to think like people; instead, it's about applying mathematical algorithms to massive amounts of data to predict the likelihood of things happening." Schoenberg wrote.

In the book, Scheinberg also makes a widely cited point-big data is concerned not with random samples, but with the whole body of data; not with precision, but with confounding; not with causation, but with correlation.

"Specifically, the purpose of big data is comprehensive data collection and analysis; at the same time, we need to understand that there is a balance between the quality of data and the quantity of data, so it's 'not about precision, but about confounding' and 'not about causality, but correlation,' which is making us realize that causality is no longer the only logic to explain the world." Sch?nberg told the Times.

In addition, Scheinberg was the first to advocate the commercial application of big data. In The Age of Big Data, he points out that today's data has become a kind of business capital, an important economic input that can create new economic benefits. And that's one of the reasons he's repeatedly been treated as a guest of honor by the Chinese, who are pushing hard for the development of the big data industry.

Besides focusing on the value of data, another important area of interest for Scheinberg is how to avoid its misuse. In his book Delete: The Tao of Big Data Tradeoffs, published long before The Age of Big Data, Scheinberg raises the biggest problem of the digital age: the Internet remembers what people wish they had forgotten. When forgetting becomes the exception and remembering becomes the norm, the ability of humans to make rational decisions is threatened. Therefore, in the era of big data, everyone should enjoy the "right to be forgotten".

As a matter of fact, Sch?nberg himself established a set of deletion guidelines for himself early on. For example, he gives away or disposes of clothes that he hasn't worn in more than two years, and deletes photos that don't look good. Because, "if you don't delete, in the digital age, the Internet may know you better than you know yourself."

Sch?nberg's novel ideas once had readers clamoring for an eye-opener. And currently, he told the Times, his point of interest turned to small drones. In fact, has always been, Scheinberg on the airplane driving as well as unmanned based on big data analysis are quite interested. I just don't know what kind of "mind-bending" thinking the data scientist will bring to this issue in the future.

Conversation with Sch?nberg:

"As long as they don't abuse their power, they don't have to be anti-monopoly on the data oligopoly"

Times reporter Han Wei from Shanghai

September 13, in an exclusive interview with the Times reporter, Sch?nberg recounted some of his own understanding of big data, and the process of harvesting that understanding. understanding, and the process of harvesting these understandings.

The person who influenced him the most was his high school physics teacher

Time: This summer, the biopic "The Imitation Game," based on Alan Turing, was released in China and touched many people. Have you seen the movie? Alan Turing is the father of computer science, did he have any influence on your research in data science?

Sch?nberg: I've seen the movie. In fact, I read some of Turing's treatises many years ago. As you may recall, I used to be required to code when I was a software company, so Turing's books were definitely required.

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

TIME: Everyone considers you to be one of the most important data scientists today. I'm particularly curious about how big data has made a difference in your own daily life.

Sch?nberg: I am a "big user" of big data services. Usually, I wear an Apple Watch, which has been providing a lot of help for my health; I also like e-commerce companies such as Amazon, and I often use Google Maps. In addition, Wikipedia is a rare good helper for me, it makes it easier for me to get useful information than in the past, and it helps me a lot.

TIME: I interviewed American economist Tyler Cowen, author of the best-selling book The Great Stagnation, this year. In talking about his views on big data, he told me, "Big data is overrated because, most people don't know what they're going to use all this data they're holding in their hands for, and neither do businesses. Big data can help us be more efficient at certain edges, like targeted advertising, but it can't change the big picture. The hardest part of this is asking the right questions and finding the specific patterns behind the questions and then using the data to match them. That's very difficult to achieve." Do you agree with him?

Sch?nberg: I'm a big admirer of Tyler Cowen, and The Great Stagnation is a great book. And I've quoted some of the ideas in that book. But on the subject of big data, I think he's wrong, perhaps, because this area is not a core area of expertise that he studies.

Big data can reduce the harm of resource inequity

Time Weekly: Now, most of the industry mentioned big data will say "this is a revolution in the industry, to subvert the past". Do you think that big data will really disrupt those traditional industries?

Sch?nberg: Yes, the disruption is already happening, and it's happening fast. John Seely Brown, the former head of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, for one, found that the lifespan of mega-corporations has been shortening over the past few decades. At the same time, we've seen, just in the last few years, the emergence of big data-driven Internet companies with valuations of tens of billions of dollars or more. At no other time in human history has change occurred faster than today, in more areas than today.

Times: Currently, there exist three major Internet giants in China, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, ruling the search, e-commerce and social sectors, respectively, and they continue to absorb data on users' online behaviors, and are almost certain to become China's data oligarchs. Do you think anti-monopoly is needed at the data level?

Sch?nberg: One thing I think is necessary is for the Internet to remain open to new innovative actors. As long as big corporations don't abuse their power to drive smaller but better startups out of the market, then they don't create much of a threat. So I'm more concerned about the actual behavior of these companies than their size.

TIME: In addition to data, I know that you also have a deep interest in education issues. In January this year, you published a new book titled "Walking with Big Data: The Future of Learning and Education", which is dedicated to exploring the application of big data research in the field of education, in order to truly realize the teaching of students according to their aptitude. And the main problem of education in China is the unfair distribution of educational resources, can big data solve this problem?

Sch?nberg: Big data can't fundamentally eliminate this inequity, but by means of big data, we can provide highly personalized education at a relatively low cost, thus reducing the harm caused by this inequity. In other words, big data can enable students to obtain customized education at a very low cost, at least like "private tutoring". So Big Data can be a game changer.

The above is the father of big data Sch?nberg:The Internet knows more about you than you do, more information can be concerned about the Global Ivy to share more dry goods