Business models and the singularity
Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2025 4:41 am
Major revolutions in science often begin with a breakthrough in measurement. We are now at the beginning of a new era, comparable to the start of modern science in the 17th century. The search for the Higgs boson is the starting point of this new era.
The hunt for the Higgs boson
For the past 48 years, physics has been focused on finding the Higgs Bosson particle. Near Geneva, deep beneath the border of France and Switzerland, a 27-kilometre-long circular tunnel has been built. This underground passage houses the world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
On 30 March 2010, the LHC was officially put into operation for the first time. That day, two proton beams were fired at each other at almost the speed of light to simulate the creation of the universe. Before the experiment took place, a number of prophets of doom announced the end of the earth. The experiment would namely lead to a new Big Bang. As a result of this collision, a black hole would be created that would swallow the earth whole.
Fortunately, we were spared this doomsday scenario. What the head-on collision did produce, however, was an enormous amount of data. Several detectors shot a billion pictures in a fraction of a second. In this short period of time, several petabytes of raw data were produced. Unfortunately, the capacity to store and process all this information does not yet exist. Hardware and software necessarily reduce the billion images obtained to a hundred events per second. Approximately 99 percent of the data obtained is therefore deliberately discarded.
Eureka
It is therefore not surprising that on July 4, 2012, scientists at CERN – the institute responsible for the construction and operation of the world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – announced that the Higgs boson particle had been traced in the tens of petabytes of data that had been collected over the past few years. Thousands of scientists worldwide had analyzed the enormous amount of data using the latest technologies and after a 48-year search, the “Goddamn particle” had finally been found.
According to Joe Incandela, CMS spokesman at CERN, the search for the Higgs boson particle can be compared to searching for a few anomalous grains of sand in an Olympic swimming pool filled to the brim with sand. Every observed collision in the LHC is a grain of sand. Only a few collisions demonstrate the existence of the God particle. So try searching for those grains of sand in the swimming pool. An almost impossible task. Finding the proverbial needle in a haystack is child's play in comparison. It is not for nothing that scientists praise the discovery of the God particle as the greatest scientific discovery of the 21st century.
About Big Data and Small Data
The fact that we are able to prove that the Higgs boson actually exists shows the impact that Big Data will have in the near future. Just as we could zoom in and out with the optical instruments of the 17th century, we can now use advanced hardware and software to search through large amounts of data at lightning speed to discover structures and relationships for dramatically better insights, decisions and solutions.
On the one hand, we can zoom in on the continuous flow of data to a detailed level. Nanodata, Bryjolfsson calls this during his presentation at the Premier Business Leadership Series 2012 Conference. This smallest set of data provides unique insights into the needs of individuals. It gives companies the opportunity to serve these people in a customized way, because nanodata helps them to respond to the personal preferences of the individual. In the book “The Intention Economy – When Customers Take Charge”, author Doc Searls also calls this nanodata “small data”. According to Searls’ vision, consumers have control over their own data. They decide for themselves which, commercial or otherwise, institution gets access to their personal data.
On the other hand, we can zoom out indefinitely on an inexhaustible source of data. By combining different italy telegram data sources of data, we can distinguish new patterns. With the right lens, with the right focus, we can gain insights that were previously hidden from the human eye. New algorithms provide the opportunity to create order in the information chaos that Big Data initially calls upon us.
Google car self drivingConsider, for example, Google's self-driving cars. In order for a computer to drive independently, enormous amounts of data must be collected and analyzed. Google Maps and Google Street View provide the information needed to explore the road. In addition, real-time information is provided in the form of video, radar and LIDAR (light detection and ranging) by equipment mounted on top of the self-driving cars. All this data is then analyzed by intelligent algorithms, which take into account traffic regulations, location, the route to be taken and possible objects that are encountered during the drive. The end result is a car that drives better than anyone else in the world.
Technologies are now following each other so quickly that the world has accelerated. In the article “ Business Models and Singularity ” Greg Satell asks what the influence is of these technological innovations on the decision-making processes of companies. Can companies still afford not to adapt to their rapidly changing environment? Should companies resist all this new technology or should they embrace it? At the end of his article Satell makes the following remark that business models are no longer carved out of stone by wise men:
“Business models can no longer be treated as stone tablets, divined by wise men on mountains to last for eternity” .
The hunt for the Higgs boson
For the past 48 years, physics has been focused on finding the Higgs Bosson particle. Near Geneva, deep beneath the border of France and Switzerland, a 27-kilometre-long circular tunnel has been built. This underground passage houses the world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
On 30 March 2010, the LHC was officially put into operation for the first time. That day, two proton beams were fired at each other at almost the speed of light to simulate the creation of the universe. Before the experiment took place, a number of prophets of doom announced the end of the earth. The experiment would namely lead to a new Big Bang. As a result of this collision, a black hole would be created that would swallow the earth whole.
Fortunately, we were spared this doomsday scenario. What the head-on collision did produce, however, was an enormous amount of data. Several detectors shot a billion pictures in a fraction of a second. In this short period of time, several petabytes of raw data were produced. Unfortunately, the capacity to store and process all this information does not yet exist. Hardware and software necessarily reduce the billion images obtained to a hundred events per second. Approximately 99 percent of the data obtained is therefore deliberately discarded.
Eureka
It is therefore not surprising that on July 4, 2012, scientists at CERN – the institute responsible for the construction and operation of the world's largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – announced that the Higgs boson particle had been traced in the tens of petabytes of data that had been collected over the past few years. Thousands of scientists worldwide had analyzed the enormous amount of data using the latest technologies and after a 48-year search, the “Goddamn particle” had finally been found.
According to Joe Incandela, CMS spokesman at CERN, the search for the Higgs boson particle can be compared to searching for a few anomalous grains of sand in an Olympic swimming pool filled to the brim with sand. Every observed collision in the LHC is a grain of sand. Only a few collisions demonstrate the existence of the God particle. So try searching for those grains of sand in the swimming pool. An almost impossible task. Finding the proverbial needle in a haystack is child's play in comparison. It is not for nothing that scientists praise the discovery of the God particle as the greatest scientific discovery of the 21st century.
About Big Data and Small Data
The fact that we are able to prove that the Higgs boson actually exists shows the impact that Big Data will have in the near future. Just as we could zoom in and out with the optical instruments of the 17th century, we can now use advanced hardware and software to search through large amounts of data at lightning speed to discover structures and relationships for dramatically better insights, decisions and solutions.
On the one hand, we can zoom in on the continuous flow of data to a detailed level. Nanodata, Bryjolfsson calls this during his presentation at the Premier Business Leadership Series 2012 Conference. This smallest set of data provides unique insights into the needs of individuals. It gives companies the opportunity to serve these people in a customized way, because nanodata helps them to respond to the personal preferences of the individual. In the book “The Intention Economy – When Customers Take Charge”, author Doc Searls also calls this nanodata “small data”. According to Searls’ vision, consumers have control over their own data. They decide for themselves which, commercial or otherwise, institution gets access to their personal data.
On the other hand, we can zoom out indefinitely on an inexhaustible source of data. By combining different italy telegram data sources of data, we can distinguish new patterns. With the right lens, with the right focus, we can gain insights that were previously hidden from the human eye. New algorithms provide the opportunity to create order in the information chaos that Big Data initially calls upon us.
Google car self drivingConsider, for example, Google's self-driving cars. In order for a computer to drive independently, enormous amounts of data must be collected and analyzed. Google Maps and Google Street View provide the information needed to explore the road. In addition, real-time information is provided in the form of video, radar and LIDAR (light detection and ranging) by equipment mounted on top of the self-driving cars. All this data is then analyzed by intelligent algorithms, which take into account traffic regulations, location, the route to be taken and possible objects that are encountered during the drive. The end result is a car that drives better than anyone else in the world.
Technologies are now following each other so quickly that the world has accelerated. In the article “ Business Models and Singularity ” Greg Satell asks what the influence is of these technological innovations on the decision-making processes of companies. Can companies still afford not to adapt to their rapidly changing environment? Should companies resist all this new technology or should they embrace it? At the end of his article Satell makes the following remark that business models are no longer carved out of stone by wise men:
“Business models can no longer be treated as stone tablets, divined by wise men on mountains to last for eternity” .