Talking about deep text, maybe not everyone – whether laity, practitioners and academics – who are familiar with these words. In our everyday lives, of course we very often find and read the text, say like books, newspapers, banners, billboards, television and even on social media even as Twitter, Facebook, Path, and various mobile applications such as whatsapp, Line, BBM, we certainly find the text we read on its own, not even a few people who find it difficult to break away from reading the texts. But the real question is whether we are able to interpret the text in depth, so that the text is not merely “reading material”, but it can add to our knowledge, a way to make the text easier to understand and can be used for various purposes.
There are times when a text or even a bunch of text, can be a “tool” which is important for individuals, groups or organizations and companies. But how to make a text – as you read this time – can be more useful and far more profitable for you, is to transform the texts you read, to be a source of information for you, then you change it again in a certain way, so that information can become a knowledge, then at that point the text can be used as an “asset” that is useful for you.
But we must remember, that the texts could be integrated into a horrible “monster” that we know as a “BIG DATA”. I say horrible, because the technology that exists today, has not been able to fully manage the texts that exist in big data, into something that is truly insightful. Yes of course, right now there are many IT companies that do business in the processing of the Big Data, especially for the texts that came from social media, in order to give an insight or meaning which is beneficial for companies who are the clients of the IT company. But actually, the sources of information from various media that we already seen, if it can not properly managed, of course, would just be a pile of text that is not useful, even if the text has been treated in such a way through the process in a technology, that is very complicated in the process of codification, so it can generate a various information that may, according to some company, can be the basis for developing a business strategy.
There are certain methods that can be used to analyze a set of texts in order to become a knowledge needed by individuals, groups or organizations. Starting with categorizing existing texts into a simple semantic category (such as categorizing verb, noun or adjective), then pull out the texts that can be compiled into a new text which can be summarized into an information.
This method is commonly used by IT companies in getting a tendency for the perception or opinion of the public at large, regarding a predetermined object, or can we call it as an analysis of public sentiment. By knowing the public sentiment – divided into sentiment positive, neutral and negative – we can get the information on the like or dislike of the public, so that for the future, we can take a strategic decision, and when strategic decisions are taken, then the information that was derived from big data, could be a knowledge that has particular meaning and beneficial to those who need it.
Well, it looks simple isn’t it? Then if this simple, why doesn’t everyone has the ability to interpret the text in their surrounding areas, so that they can make it a source of new knowledge? The first reason is likely that not all individuals, groups or companies, find out what exactly the benefits of text itself, especially in the monsters that i called as big data. Then individually, perhaps we’ve all been doing deep text analytics every day, but we did not realize it. I take an example when we chat about work, family, or even a matter of romance with your friends, just by reading and understanding the text of their chat, is it true if i say that we also have done a form of text analysis? Then when we open google and searching for the information on something by typing in the keywords, does it not also a form of text analysis? Also in the context of the company, with the concept of “market – driven company”, the company urgently requires the perception of the market in order to survive and thrive in the industry? So how can companies be able to know that if the company itself does not care about big data?
Perhaps one of the most common reasons why not all companies do this is the cost that is needed, especially in developing technology, in order slowly to conquer the monster. The other reason maybe the companies said “We don’t do such a thing here”, or “It’s too complex for us”, and “If IT doesn’t know what it is, it doesn’t exist.”
In the end, at this time, maybe the texts and the deep text analytics in it, remains a mystery that still can’t be solved completely. But one day when the human was able to develop a technologies that can defeat this big data, we can imagine how big will the source of new knowledge that can be obtained and utilized for various purposes.
Yes, the deep text is exist, and this is one way to conquer information overload, and get real value from bigger text to big data.