Last April on this site, I wrote a post on Big Metadata. Long story short: Big Data is becoming a big deal. It was true then, and it's doubly true now.

Case in point: startups like Recorded Future are now able to put some, well, data behind Big Data. The following chart shows "Big Data Business" in the US:

This should not be entirely shocking. For instance, Nevada is pretty "Big Data" free, save for a few conferences. (I suspect that there'll be quite a few more in 2013 than the two in 2012.) What's more, because of the use of Big Data by the Obama team in the 2012 presidential election, we see plenty of activity around Washington, DC.

As I write about in Too Big to Ignore, Big Data is exploding as we speak, and visualization tools like the ones above are popping up all of the time.

I'm definitely drinking the Big Data Kool Aid. (I tend to do that when I write books.) Nevertheless, I suspect that in the very near future most jobs of knowledge workers will involve looking at - and interacting with - data, big and otherwise. I see fewer and fewer jobs that will be "data-free." Fields like data science will continue to rise in importance.

With any new technology and trend, many will resist it. What's wrong with the status quo? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Big Data will unquestionably make some people uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable. Many of us don't want to look at data when we make business decisions. And then there are those who firmly believe that all data must be viewable in Excel.

Big mistake.

Simon Says: Change the Data Mind-Set

Data can improve our decision-making prowess - and not just the structured kind easily represented in a spreadsheet. Data of all types and from all sources can help us find needles in haystacks, answer existing questions and find better questions to ask. For that reason, it's time to get on board with Big Data - or get left behind.

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What say you?