An early precursor of big data was the advances made by US merchants in the nineties with electronic point of sale (EPOS) data capture. It gave birth to the loyalty card industry and increased awareness of the value of data.
When the dust had settled after the dotcom bubble in 2000 many were surprised to learn how few people globally had access to the web and how even fewer had access to broadband. As more and more services migrated online big data exploded. How was data being collected and what was being done with data became my big theme for 2008.