Classroom Companion: Business

 
Chapter 19 · Digital Business Models

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© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 
Switzerland AG 2021
H. Øverby, J. A. Audestad, Introduction to Digital Economics, 
Classroom Companion: Business,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78237-5_20
305
Big Data 
Economics
Contents
20.1 
 Zettabyte Era – 307
20.1.1 
 Generation – 307
20.1.2 
 Processing – 307
20.1.3 
 Distribution – 308
20.1.4 
 Storage – 309
20.2 
 Characteristics
of Big Data – 312
20.3 
 Use of Big Data – 314
20.3.1 
 Marketing – 314
20.3.2 
 Health Care – 314
20.3.3 
 Algorithmic Financial Trading – 314
20.3.4 
 Government and Public
Services – 315
20.3.5 
 Insurance – 315
20.3.6 
 Retailers – 315
20.3.7 
 Data Brokers – 315
20.3.8 
 Electronic Media – 315
20.3.9 
 Science – 315
20.3.10  Data Illiteracy – 316
20

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20.4 
 Abuse of Big Data – 317
20.4.1 
 Clandestine Operations – 318
20.4.2 
 Social Control – 319
20.4.3 
 Tracking People – 320
20.4.4 
 Violation of Personal
Integrity – 320
20.5 
 Conclusions – 320
 References – 322

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307
20
 
n Learning Objectives
After completing this chapter, you should be able to:
5
Understand the basic concepts related to big data.
5
Identify business opportunities offered by the big data technology.
5
Explain how big data can be abused.
20.1
 Zettabyte Era
Generation, processing, distribution, and storage of data have undergone major 
transformations during the last 30 years (Hilbert & López, 
2011
; Cisco Annual 
Internet Report (2018–2023) White Paper. Published March 9, 2020) (the data 
below are based on raw data from these two sources).
20.1.1 
 Generation
In 1993, only 3% of all data stored was digital; the rest was stored on analog media 
such as books, cassettes, and video tapes. In 2007, this number had increased to 
84%. Today, almost all data is available in a digital format. The main reasons are 
that most of the analog data from earlier times has been converted to digital data 
and, more important, that almost all data generated after 1990 has been produced 
directly in a digital format. The evolution is shown in 
.
Fig. 
20.1
. The total 
amount of annually generated data is shown in 
.
Fig. 
20.2
. The amount of data 
generated in 2019 is estimated to be 43 zettabytes, and it is predicted that this num-
ber will increase to 175 zettabytes in 2025 if the amount of data produced contin-
ues to increase by 23% per year. One zettabyte is one trillion gigabytes or 10
21
bytes. 
Data is generated by four major sources: imaging (e.g., medical imaging and sur-
veillance cameras), entertainment (e.g., television and radio shows, videos, pod-
casts, social media, and video games), manufacturing and administration (e.g., 
automation, Internet of Things, and word processing), and voice (mobile phones 
and VoIP). Not all this information is stored; for example, most telephone conver-
sations are not stored (Reinsel et al., 
2018
).