Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
approach to study real nature, for example, the researches on
Bioinformatics
[2],
Brain Informatics
[3] and
Behavior Informatics
[4] indicate that we can study
life and human brain by studying related scientific data.
This paper proposes
dataology
(also called
data science
or
science of data
)
which is an umbrella of theories, methods and technologies for studying data
nature. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces data
explosion. Section 3 describes data nature including natural features and evolu-
tion, as well as key issues in data nature. Section 4 presents dataology as a new
research discipline and provides its framework and content. Finally, Section 5
gives concluding remarks.
2DaExpoon
Data are increasing explosively with the development of human being. Trying to
remember is the instinct of human being. From time immemorial, using brain to
remember experienced things is the primary means. Because of some unknown
reasons, human memory cannot retain everything they read. The memories in
human brain are also unreliable. Thus, human seeks various tools to help them
to memorize all along. Originally, human carved figures and characters on hard
objects to assist remembering. They found that the information recorded out of
brain was convenient for transmission and communication, therefore the human
instinct of recording information is deepened.
The inventions of papermaking and printing brought about the first data
explosion
1
during which a mass of natural things (including natural phenomena,
culture, society, etc.) are represented by characters or figures, and then printed
into topics or materials. That is, the information about a period of history can
be recorded into a book for memorizing and transmitting, such as the Bible,
the Records of the Grand Historian, and so on. The information can be stored
for a long time, replicated many times, and spread widely. During the course
of this data explosion, the authors/publishers produced information, and the
books/libraries stored and conveyed information.
The inventions of computers (especially Internet/WWW) and storage devices
brought about the second data explosion. It is a process that data in computer
systems explosively increase because human continuously stores data when they
use the computers. During this explosion, all of topics in the earlier libraries and
previous publications (i.e., main productions in the first data explosion) can be
stored into a personal computer, even a removable hard disk.
So far no proof indicates that there exists a kind of device which can replace
computers and storage devices. In the future, a certain kind of man-made being
1
The term “information explosion” and “data explosion” are usually replaceable.
Information is the explanation of data, and data is the symbolic representation of
information. Therefore, in general, the more the information, the more the data
required to be stored is. Conversely, the more the data, the more the information
can be expressed is. In this paper, we use the term “data explosion”.
