Sehrish Irum
The venerable Mary Meeker often brings some interesting insights in her annual State of the Internet. This year was no exception. No doubt you saw the flurry of Wall Street Journal All Things Digital D11 post-event roundups and summaries and analysis-of-her-analysis. One thing didn’t get as much play in the media as you might expect, and certainly not as much as I expected: what she said about data and Big Brother.
Meeker made some interesting observations about the flood of personal data that’s becoming available on the internet. As she pointed out, the amount of global digital information created and shared—from documents to pictures to tweets—grew nine fold in five years to two zettabytes by 2011, per IDC.
We started with sharing our personal photos—on Facebook and the rest. It’s now estimated that 500 million photos are shared on the internet every day—and that’s on track to double in 12 months. We’re increasingly sharing video now, with sound and personal data coming hot on video’s heels.
Unfortunately many see a shadow associated with sharing personal data at such a large scale. In fact, there’s been some backlash against that data being available. Lots of fear and rumor-mongering is keeping us from embracing this. “Big Brother is watching,” they say, Orwell warned us! And some stir up concerns about potential dangers when others can get their hands on data about you. Please Rob Me (http://pleaserobme.com/) is one example.
But what if Orwell was wrong? What if the information sharing society is not dystopian but rather a BETTER place because of sharing?
As Meeker pointed out, a world where all that data is available is exciting and valuable. I contend that the notion of Big Brother creating a miserable future was wrong. Why? Because in the future that actually is taking place, the future Orwell could not predict, we CHOOSE to share data because we get something valuable in return. It is not the government, it’s US! We’re learning to be “Always-On Connected Global Citizens,” and we are all on the same wire – literally 200ms away from anyone on the planet.
The way this works is that we will share data under two conditions: 1) we get something valuable in return, and 2) we are in control of turning it on or off. For example, there are apps that track exactly where I am when I’m driving in my car – horrible in the Orwell future, right? Not for us! I use Waze (www.waze.com) to share my exact location and other attributes in real time, and in return I can see exact traffic patterns, road closures, and even police locations and make better decisions about how to get where I am going the fastest. There are many examples beyond sharing location data – people are sharing how far they walk, their weight, their blood pressure, and many very sensitive data elements – all because they get something in return that helps them. This is a future Orwell could not have predicted. And Big Brother may turn out to be a pretty nice guy.
That’s what data sharing is all about. The trend we are seeing in increasing amounts of data being shared is really about the value that everyone sees in the deal. The more value, the better. We’re helping each other, making the internet and our real world better places to be. It’s a collaborative world, and I, for one, look forward to seeing more of it.
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