Good look at the history of the marketing term big data. I think this fits squarely in the realm of big data hype, or at least a review of why it is big data hype (something I've blogged about here http://www.klaviyo.com/blog/2012/07/16/the-curse-analytics-b...). The SAS discussion makes it especially clear that it's viewed as a trend.

But - posts like these frequently jump to the top of hacker news, and there's clearly a feeling that access to new analyses and more data is going to change the world. I think this is probably right. I'd love to hear more discussion of how big data has already started this process.

Examples I can think of (and I'd love to hear more): - weather analysis for farmers (weatherbill / the climate corporation) - marketing (the target pregnancy example - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.h...)

More examples?