The creativity and ingenuity of human beings have enabled the development of technologies that have globally benefited all of humanity. The Internet is arguably one of the most important, if not the most crucial, technological achievements made by man. The Internet has enabled seemingly less transfer of data and information in seconds. This innovation was accompanied by an increase in communication, a better understanding of other cultures and massive data collection. The amount of data that now exists thanks to the Internet has created the need for Big Data. Big Data has developed as a solution to traditional IT infrastructure that has become obsolete due to its inability to handle the massive amounts of data that currently exist. The benefits of Big Data are increasingly numerous and attractive, as they can improve the efficiency of business, research and health sciences. Yet the consequences of the use of Big Data are just as intensifying and causing backlash in many communities. Current issues with Big Data and the increasingly dependent nature of the world's populations on Big Data will undoubtedly impact the use of Big Data in the future. Even though many people recognize the power of the Internet and the amount of data accessible through the Internet, these same people are not aware of Big Data itself. According to Tom Price, author of the article Big Data and Privacy, “Big data is the collection and analysis of enormous amounts of information by supercomputers” (Price). It is also better known as the way in which data extraction is obtained from a plethora of non-traditional sources. These sources can often involve unstructured data such as HTML, email, and social data. However, these sources may also be structured...... middle of paper ...... many parties will do whatever is necessary to obtain such information. Overall, there is an increasing use of big data by a number of different actors. organizations, industries and people. Many governments, researchers, scientists and businesses use Big Data to obtain information to achieve their goals. This obtaining of information by these parties is considered by many to be controversial and detrimental to the privacy of individuals. The debate over the use of big data will become more important as more information is collected from various sources. The more data collected, the less confidential the individual information will be. The topic of Big Data will grow in popularity as technology advances and more data becomes available to a number of different parties.Works CitedPrice, Tom. “Big data and privacy.” CQ Researcher (2013): 910-29. Print.