With big data, is qualitative research in consulting industry still valuable?

1 The rise of big data indicates that the "information age" has entered a new stage. 1 We should have a historical perspective on big data. Compared with the agricultural and industrial times, the information age is a long one. There are obvious differences in production factors and social development motivation in different periods. The iconic technological inventions in the information age are digital computers, integrated circuits, optical fiber communication World Wide China. Although there are a lot of "big data era" in the media, new technologies such as big data and cloud computing have not yet achieved technological breakthroughs comparable to the above-mentioned epoch-making technological inventions, and it is difficult to form a new era beyond the information age. The information age can be divided into several stages, and the application of new technologies such as big data indicates that the information society will enter a new stage. Through the investigation and analysis of the long history of 100 years, we can find that there are many similarities between the development laws of the information age and the industrial age. The process of improving productivity in the electrification era is strikingly similar to that in the information age. It is only after 20 to 30 years of diffusion reserves that the increase is more obvious. The dividing lines are 19 15 and 1995 respectively. I guess, after decades of information technology dissemination, the first 30 years of 2 1 century may be the golden age for information technology to enhance productivity. 1.2 Understanding "Big Data" from the height of "the new stage of the information age" China has begun to enter the information age, but many people's thoughts are still in the industrial age. Many problems in economic and scientific work are rooted in the lack of understanding of the times. China was beaten backward in the18-19th century because the Manchu government didn't realize that times had changed and we couldn't repeat the historical mistakes. After the central government put forward that China's economy has entered the "new normal", there have been many discussions in the media, but most of them are explanations for the slowdown of economic growth, and there are few articles discussing the "new normal" from the perspective of the changes of the times. The author believes that the new economic normal means that China has entered a new stage of promoting new industrialization, urbanization and agricultural modernization with information technology, which is a leap in economic and social management, not an expedient measure, nor a retrogression. The "third platform" of IT architecture, which is composed of big data, mobile Internet China, social China network, cloud computing, IOT China and other new information technologies, is a sign that the information society has entered a new stage and has a leading and driving role in the transformation of the whole economy. Internet China, Maker, "The Second Machine Revolution" and "Industry 4.0" which often appear in the media are all related to big data and cloud computing. Big data and cloud computing are new levers to improve productivity under the new normal. The so-called innovation-driven development mainly relies on information technology to improve productivity. 1.3 Big data may be a breakthrough for China's information industry from tracking to leading. China's big data enterprises have a good foundation. China, the world's top ten interconnected China service enterprises, has four seats (Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and JD.COM). COM), and the other six Top 10 interconnected China service enterprises are all American enterprises. China enterprises that are not interconnected between Europe and Japan have entered Top 10. This shows that China enterprises have taken the lead in the world in the Internet China service business based on big data. In the development of big data technology, China may change the situation that technology is controlled by people in the past 30 years, and China may play a leading role in the application of big data in the world. However, the fact that enterprises are at the forefront of the world does not mean that China is ahead in big data technology. In fact, none of the mainstream technologies of big data that are popular in the world are initiated by China. Open source community and crowdsourcing are important ways to develop big data technology and industry, but our contribution to open source community is very small. Among the nearly 10,000 community core volunteers in the world, there may be less than 200 in China. It is necessary to learn from the lessons that basic research provided enterprises with insufficient core technologies in the past, strengthen basic research and forward-looking technology research on big data, and strive to overcome the core and key technologies of big data. 2 Understanding big data needs to rise to the height of culture and epistemology. 2. 1 Data culture is an advanced culture. The essence of data culture is to respect the spirit of seeking truth from facts in the objective world, and data is facts. Paying attention to data means emphasizing the scientific spirit of speaking with facts and thinking rationally. The traditional habit of China people is qualitative thinking, not quantitative thinking. At present, many cities are opening government data, but it is found that most people are not interested in the data that the government wants to open. To put big data on the track of healthy development, we must first vigorously promote data culture. The data culture mentioned in this paper is not only the big data used by cultural industries such as literature and art, publishing, but also the data consciousness of the whole people. The whole society should realize that the core of informatization is data, and only when the government and the public attach importance to data can we truly understand the essence of informatization; Data is a new factor of production, and the use of big data can change the weight of traditional factors such as capital and land in the economy. Some people sum up the dance between God and data as one of the characteristics of American culture, saying that Americans have both sincerity to God and rationality to seek truth through data. The United States has completed the thinking transformation of data culture from the gilded era to the progressive era. After the Civil War, the census method was applied to many fields, forming a thinking mode of data prediction and analysis. In the past century, the modernization of the United States and western countries is closely related to the spread and infiltration of data culture, and China must also emphasize data culture in order to realize modernization. The key to raising data awareness is to understand the strategic significance of big data. Data is a strategic resource as important as material and energy. Data collection and analysis involves every industry and is a global and strategic technology. The transition from hard technology to soft technology is a global technology development trend, and the technology that finds value from data is the most dynamic soft technology. The backwardness of data technology and data industry will delay an era like missing the opportunity of industrial revolution. 2.2 Understanding big data requires a correct epistemology. Historically, scientific research began with logical deduction, and all the theorems of Euclid's geometry can be deduced from several axioms. Since Galileo and Newton, scientific research has paid more attention to natural observation and experimental observation, and on the basis of observation, scientific theories have been refined by induction. "Science begins with observation" has become the mainstream of scientific research and epistemology. Both empiricism and rationalism have made great contributions to the development of science, but they have also exposed obvious problems and even gone to extremes. Rationalism went to extremes, becoming dogmatism criticized by Kant, and empiricism went to extremes, becoming skepticism and agnosticism. In 1930s, the German philosopher Popper put forward an epistemological viewpoint called "falsificationism" by later generations. He believes that scientific theory can not be proved by induction, but can only be falsified by counterexamples found in experiments, so he denies that science begins with observation and puts forward the famous view that science begins with problems [3]. Falsificationism has its limitations. If we strictly abide by the law of falsification, important theories such as the law of universal gravitation and atomism may be killed by the early so-called counterexamples. However, the view that "science begins with problems" has guiding significance for the development of big data technology. The rise of big data has triggered a new scientific research model: "Science begins with data". From the epistemological point of view, the analysis method of big data is close to the empiricism that "science begins with observation", but we should keep in mind the lessons of history and avoid slipping into the empirical mud pit that denies the role of theory. Don't doubt the existence of "causality" when emphasizing "correlation"; When declaring the objectivity and neutrality of big data, don't forget that no matter the size of the data, big data will always be subject to its own limitations and human prejudice. Don't believe the prophecy: "With big data mining, you don't need to ask any questions about the data, and the data will automatically generate knowledge". Faced with a huge amount of data, the biggest confusion for scientists and technicians engaged in data mining is, what is the "needle" we want to catch? Is there a needle in this sea? In other words, we need to know what the problem is. In this sense, "science begins with data" and "science begins with problems" should be organically combined. The pursuit of "career" is the eternal power of scientific development. However, the reasons are endless, and it is impossible for human beings to find the "ultimate truth" in a limited time. On the road of scientific exploration, people often use "this is an objective law" to explain the world, not immediately.