Big data is going to help solve big problems: how we grow food; how we deliver supplies to those in need; how we cure disease. But first, we need to figure out how to handle it. Modern life is filled with connected gadgets. We now produce more data in a day than we did over thousands of years. Kenneth Cukier explains how data has changed, and how it’s beginning to change us. Dr. Ellen Grant tells us how Boston Children’s Hospital is using open source software to transform mountains of data into individualized treatments. And Sage Weil shares how Ceph’s scalable and resilient cloud storage helps us manage the data flood. Gathering information is key to understanding the world around us. Big data is helping us expand our never-ending mission of discovery.