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The fastest growing data set of all is the one being created by you. Every time we call, text, search, travel, buy, we add to the data mountain. All told, it's growing by 2.5 billion gigabytes every day. And it's brought out the data hunters, like Mike Baker.

The volume of it, the dynamic nature of the data is changing how we live our lives. And if you collect this information over millions of people, you can start to guess what they may be interested in next. He saw an opportunity. to bring the data revolution to the world of advertising. Instead of relying on customers seeing a billboard, it was now possible to beam the adverts directly to them.

We started to look and think about all of the data. If we collected enough about past behavior, could it be predictive in a way that would be useful for business in terms of trying to connect to people Mike wanted to mine this data, to predict what people might want to buy. His first hurdle was how to search through the vast amount of data we produce every day to find the tiny signals of our consumer interest.

I quickly realized that a big part of the problem was actually the math. It was clear there were no systems, not even really mathematical constructs, where you could capture the information, make sense of it, and then turn around and create actions across hundreds of millions of people simultaneously. As if capturing the vast data set created by mobile computing wasn't challenge enough,

Mike also wanted to mine it virtually instantaneously. He wanted to find hints of what people might want to buy, even before they'd realised it themselves. He needed to find a collaborator. Mike Baker realised Bill's decision-making model was just what he'd been looking for. They joined forces and adapted Bill's super fast decision making machine. Now it scans the billions of bits of data we produce, quickly finding clues to what

we might buy, then sends a personalized advert from one of their advertising clients. We're processing hundreds of thousands of advertisements per second. potential advertisements and determining within a hundred milliseconds, so one-tenth of a second, much faster than the blink of an eye, whether that advertisement is good for any one of our clients. The models learn what you might be tempted to buy and where and when you might buy it. They all work in concert and they pick up on patterns.

So they see the same anonymized user triggering similar behaviors over and over again. The machine learns this is a person who likes Italian food, interested in sedans and likes rock music from the 60s. The data analysts predicting what you might buy are creating a world of personalized advertising. If you choose not to personalize the advertising, you'll still get advertising. It's not a choice to have no advertising, it's just that it'll be less relevant to you

and, you know, potentially more annoying. Geoengineering strides to advance futuristic techniques that manipulate Earth's climate and combat global warming.

One plan involves putting trillions of tiny reflective lenses into space to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching and warming the Earth's surface. By reflecting light away from the Earth, the lenses would redirect approximately 2% of the Sun's rays, reducing global warming. But at a cost of 392 trillion dollars, it is an expensive solution.

Another idea is to enhance the planet's natural cooling system by making clouds thicker and more reflective. This would be done by spraying sea salt particles into the upper atmosphere. The seawater vapor is sprayed out of giant rotary fumbles. Salt particles in the atmosphere would attract water vapor,

creating thicker clouds that would deflect the sun's heat, thus cooling the planet. But to have a significant effect on the Earth's temperature, enormous quantities of seawater would be required. Other heat blocking innovations are born from natural disasters. In 1991 the

eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines killed hundreds and damaged thousands of homes. But two years later, the average world temperature was 0.6 degrees Celsius lower than before the eruption. Sulfur, released by the volcano, had persisted in the atmosphere, blocking some of the sun's rays, acting as a natural cooling device.

Replicating this effect would involve rocketing 1 million tons of sulfur into the stratosphere. with big risks. Large quantities of sulfur in the atmosphere have been linked to respiratory diseases, damage to the ozone layer and acid rain. Science fiction or savior science?

Geoengineering is an emerging field seeking to develop innovative technologies which may reduce or avert the catastrophe of global warming. you