The skills needed to deal with abstract data points and formulate pictures is not only badly needed now, but is also growing with each passing month. While the economy trudges along in the doldrums, digital data growth is exploding and someone has to make sense of it.

According to the popular news, failure to connect the dots is the leading cause of nearly all intelligence failures.  The pundits point to the existence of a picture or plot outlined with a bunch of dots.  The only thing missing is to draw lines between the dots and presto, the picture becomes crystal clear.

Things aren’t so simple.  What if you’re given more dots?  Seems like your picture would become more focused with more dots on it.  But what if all those extra dots didn’t belong to that picture and instead were part of other pictures?  What if a bunch of those dots didn’t belong to any pictures at all but were just there to clutter the picture?  How do you separate them, categorize them and begin to assemble pictures?  Now that sounds more like reality.

In 2004, just a short 5 years ago, there were 285 million web servers reported online in the world.   In 2009, that figure tripled to 681 million.  [i] And these are just web servers and don’t include all the private servers that have been implemented since then.

On the wireless side, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) forecasts mobile cellular subscriptions will surpass 5 Billion in 2010.  [ii]

The forecasted amount of data from these devices can be found in the Cisco® Visual Networking Index (VNI) Global Mobile Data Forecast for 2009-2014.[iii]

The research projects that annual global mobile data traffic will reach 3.6 exabytes per month or an annual run rate of 40 exabytes by 2014.  Such a figure equates to a 39-fold increase from 2009 to 2014, or a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 108 percent.

Two major global trends are driving this increase-the proliferation of mobile-ready devices and widespread mobile video content consumption. By 2014, there could be over 5 billion personal devices connecting to mobile networks – and billions more machine-to-machine nodes. Mobile video is projected by the study to represent 66 percent of all mobile data traffic by 2014, increasing 66-fold from 2009 to 2014-the highest growth rate of any mobile data application tracked in the Cisco VNI Global Mobile Data Forecast.

What exactly does 3.6 exabytes per month mean? How much is that?

According to the table below, 5 exabytes equals all the words ever spoken by human beings, and I assume that means all languages. [iv] That’s a lot of dots.

Information object	How many bytes
A binary decision	1 bit
A single text character	1 byte
A typical text word	10 bytes
A typewritten page	2 kilobyte s ( KB s)
A low-resolution photograph	100 kilobytes
A short novel	1 megabyte ( MB )
The contents of a 3.5 inch floppy disk	1.44 megabytes
A high-resolution photograph	2 megabytes
The complete works of Shakespeare	5 megabytes
A minute of high-fidelity sound	10 megabytes
One meter (or close to a yard) of shelved books	100 megabytes
The contents of a CD-ROM	500 megabytes
A pickup truck filled with books	1 gigabyte GB )
The contents of a DVD	17 gigabyte s
A collection of the works of Beethoven	20 gigabytes
A library floor of academic journals	100 gigabytes
50,000 trees made into paper and printed	1 terabyte ( TB )
An academic research library	2 terabytes
The print collections of the U.S. Library of Congress	10 terabytes
The National Climactic Data Center database	400 terabytes
Three years’ of EOS data (2001)	1 petabyte ( PB )
All U.S. academic research libraries	2 petabytes
All hard disk capacity developed in 1995	20 petabytes
All printed material in the world	200 petabytes
Total volume of information generated in 1999	2 exabyte s ( EB s)
All words ever spoken by human beings	5 exabytes

And remember these data numbers are only related to mobile cellular data.  Add in terrestrial network data and mix in some Mandarin, Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Arabic, and German dots and your pictures start to get cloudy very fast.

So what’s hot in the career forecast for dot-connecting?

Intelligence analysts and investigators.  The ability to make sense and find meaning and context in large amounts of noise.

Translation services.   More data in multiple languages means someone has to decipher the meaning.

Cyber Security.  In 2009, the malware signature counter surpassed 5 Million.  Many of those malware files are designed to steal your data. [v] You will need to increase your security, like it or not.

Cyber Criminal.  Really.  It can be lucrative.  Lots of targets.   Writing malware, stealing credit cards, corporate espionage, or hacking for profit.   It’s a growing business–illicit, but it is a business.

Cyber Law Enforcement.   Didn’t think cyber criminals could operate freely did you?  DHS, FBI, Secret Service, State and local are all ramping up Cyber and forensic capabilities.

Cyber Lawyers.  It’s a wild frontier.  Case Law is still being written in this domain.  If you can charge by the hour, that’s good for you.

A lot has been written already on the Christmas Day panty bomber Abdulmutallab and the lack of dot-connecting that preceded the event.  Some of the databases that could have and should have been checked were in the form of microfiche not too long ago.   Now they are digital dots.  That should make searching through them easier and it does.  But with exabytes of data coming at us from the land and from the air, and even more coming in multiple languages, finding the right pictures among the noise is going to get alot harder.

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[i] “Internet host count history | Internet Systems Consortium,” https://www.isc.org/solutions/survey/history

[ii] “Press Release: ITU sees 5 billion mobile subscriptions globally in 2010,” http://www.itu.int/newsroom/press_releases/2010/06.html

[iii] “Cisco Visual Networking Index Forecast Predicts Continued Mobile Data Traffic Surge -> Cisco News,” http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2010/prod_020910b.html

[iv] “What is How many bytes for…? – Definition from Whatis.com,” http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid5_gci944596,00.html

[v] “Triumfant Worldwide Malware Signature Counter Reaches 5 Million In Less Than One Year – DarkReading,” http://www.darkreading.com/vulnerability_management/security/antivirus/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=220600888