The Evolutionary Nature of Data Consumption

Whether we recognise it or not, data plays an important role in the everyday lives of us all.

An often underestimated commodity; data provides us with everything from our daily dose of the news, to the weather forecasts we rely on, right through to driving forward innovation and research.

The process of generating and collecting data has existed for centuries albeit in different forms, from human observation with written recording through to the now much more modern electronic dataloggers such as the Campbell Scientific CR1000. Clearly we have become much more adept at creating and recording data, but, as our thirst for data continues to grow, the challenge is to stay relevant and to address the varying needs of data consumers and not only those of the data creator.