Managing big data in a complex economy

How does one run a rapidly changing society? How does one manage an increasingly complex economy - with the world's largest crowd of daily commuters, longest service length of high-speed railways, largest variety of means of road transportation and, perhaps, the most unruly bunch of drivers?

The inevitable way to go, scientists point out, is for government offices and their private-sector partners to learn to manage things by using technology to process immense real-time data, something known as big data.

As Robin Li, 46-year-old chairman of Baidu Inc, China's largest search engine, told his audience at the latest meeting of the government's advisory body of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the Internet is a good opportunity for the country, as a result of which many previously impossible things are made thinkable and doable.