Mining the Tar Sands of Big Data

Much of the world’s most valuable information is trapped in digital sand, siloed in servers scattered around the globe. Our ability to harness big data, which will mature in the coming decade, is driven by advances in three areas: sensor networks, cloud computing, and machine learning.

The tar sands of Alberta, Canada contain the largest reserves of oil on the planet. However, they remain largely untouched, and for one reason: economics. It costs as much as $40 to extract a barrel of oil from tar sand, and until recently, petroleum companies could not profitably mine these reserves…READ MORE