John Furrier and Dave Vellante got to talk with IBM Chief Data Scientist Jeff Jonas at IBM’s Information On Demand 2012. Since the last time Jeff Jonas was on theCube he said that he has been obsessing over geo-spacial data. One of the things he has been working on is “space time boxes”. This is basically taking the longitude and latitude of something in the world, and then placing it in a box that gives its location. Once this is done, time and location predictions can be calculated on that thing as it moves on the globe.

When asked about his views on data science and its importance Jonas feels that a company and individuals all take their observation space and seek to make the most of it. Data and its analysis is the means to do that. He goes on to talk about how many companies want to be able to determine various things to make decisions, but they do not have the information contained in their data. He gives the example of a company that ships items around the word and them wanting to find a bomb. They have all information related to shipments and content, but they do not actually have any information to identify a bomb. In order to do more a company will need to widen their observation space. Only looking at the information in one space can be too narrow to ask more from it than what has been asked. Jonas thinks that a good approach to data is “watching what is accruing under your eyes” to help choose what to fetch next.

Jeff Jonas goes on to talk about how he feels geo-spacial data is the next big thing. He breaks down the example of a man that has allowed himself to be followed with the “space time box” information. From that information Jonas explains that a “habitrail” is created and you can see the moving habits of a person. This information can be used to aid in traffic as well as marketing because then a company can associate locations with customers and better market to them. When asked about getting similar information out of twitter, Jonas said the problem is that an enterprise does not have the ability to link a tweet to an actual customer. The signal is good for impressions and views of a company, but to be able to capitalize on the information they would need to link a twitter account to some other social media that may give an email address or contact information for a customer.

On privacy, Jonas talks about how at one point in time he would go to a company and show them the analytics they offered, and how he would also mention the privacy options available. He says that now privacy is being sought by the company from the beginning now. They are realizing the need to address privacy now in technology rather than ignoring it and having to deal with the fallout later.

Jeff Jonas mentions that he has a project that he was working on called “G2” that is built into IBM’s SPSS version 15. He sees the future having a better integration of the ability to do real time sense and respond with deep reflection of what is being learned. This means that once new things are discovered it can be absorbed into the data and be available for the next query to help make sense of the next thing being sought.

See the entire interview below.