Participants at this National Interest event noted that Big Data represents a great opportunity for the Italian system. In point of fact, the internet and digital technologies are radically changing the process of data collection, transfer, and storage, with far-reaching impacts on the business world and society in general. The pervasive spread of new technologies has ensured that a growing number of interconnected devices are simultaneously active, thereby generating increasing amounts of data. The scale of the phenomenon was characterized as extraordinary: today, billions upon billions of bytes are produced throughout the world on a daily basis, which information is accumulating to form a highly variegated mass of data – said Big Data – now measured in zettabytes (1 followed by 21 zeros).
It was stressed, however, that Big Data is not only quantitatively different from the databases we have grown accustomed to working with, but precisely because of its volume and complexity is qualitatively different as well. Analysis of Big Data can produce knowledge and decision-making capabilities that also affect contexts far-removed from those in which the individual items of data were generated. Moreover, and above all, the knowledge which thereby emerges is not filtered through the models and theories of the context of use, thus offering a fresh means with which to understand the complexity of social, economic, biological, technological, and natural phenomena.
In terms of the economic system, it was suggested that Big Data is definitely capable of creating new business opportunities: data-driven innovation leads to participatory platforms capable of opening up new market segments, thanks to innovative tools that are also available to small and medium-sized enterprises. Attention was drawn to the fact that the manufacturing sector is a key player in this transformation: Industry 4.0 is grounded in hyperconnectivity and, hence, Big Data, the latter being set to become an important vehicle through which Italian firms might tackle and handle the growing complexity of markets.
Even so, it was acknowledged that this new industrial revolution should not be considered solely from a technological standpoint. Indeed, another key aspect is the ability to coordinate science, technology, expertise, and social context. Big Data, for that matter, has an important social impact: producing high-level statistical information can assist the process of improving public services, by boosting the role of citizens and users as well as encouraging this to be of a more active nature. In addition, from the perspective of health, the sharing of medical data enables treatment to be optimized and customizable protocols to be developed, with obvious beneficial impacts on healthcare offerings. Lastly, however, the participants urged the need not to underestimate the ramifications for privacy and security, which call for ad-hoc measures and makes new ethical paradigms necessary for governing what the European Data Protection Supervisor has termed “data-driven life”.