Everything Old is New Again

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BigData used to be about scientists moving tons of data around. 
Guess what?  Its the same thing all around again!  And its all new!  W00t!
Ok, to be fair, its about the need to move all this data around, instead of just processing it in situ.
He ascribes this massive amount of data to the emergence of cheap compute, better imaging and more information, and calls it a new way of doing science. “In every area of science we are generating a petabyte of data, and unless we have the equivalent of the 21st-century microscope, with faster networks and the corresponding computing, we are stuck,” Szalay said.

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