Oil has traditionally been considered the most valuable asset for the last few centuries. But the most important commodity could be replaced by data. The arrival of the computer and subsequent evolution of internet has snowballed the human reliance on technology and given birth to the importance of data. The top five giants, the Big Daddies of the tech world - Apple, Amazon Facebook, Google, Microsoft - know more about your daily interaction with gadgets than you yourself do. These companies are collecting a humongous amount of data of tens of millions of users every single day.
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| Image credit: Slideshare |
When you use Google Maps, you are unknowingly sharing your location info with Google and the data is combined with more users like you to recognize traffic patterns. When a lot of vehicles are moving slowly along the same street, the map can suggest you a faster route. So it is your data and that of your fellow drivers that enable Google to make maps effective. YouTube can predict your video preferences based on your location, trends, popularity and your search history. Google Assistant is evolving the way tech companies leverage the data they collect. Google itself has shared this information here .
Data is to Google what Oxygen is to a human body.
The primary job of an advertiser is to optimize every single dollar that they spend on marketing campaigns. To keep the marketing expense under check, it is vital that the advertisement reaches the right set of audiences. The record of data helps in gauging customer behavior and in targeting people who may be interested in your product.
Data is the wheel that drives the advertiser’s car.
Facebook knows what you do across the web even when you’re logged out. It keeps a track on the sites you visit, the times of it and shows you adverts accordingly. All this is done in the name of giving you a “personalized experience”. The company generates the majority of its revenue from the data it collects from its 2 billion users.
The ‘free’ service that we use from Google or Facebook is not actually free. Each website (or an app) that we use, each page we view on the internet is recorded. We are living behind our digital footprints and tech companies are able to capitalize on it and monetize our data. If the product is available to you for free, you’re the product!
Keeping the cons aside, the availability of data has changed the human relationship with technology. Self-driving cars wouldn't have existed without the availability of maps, the data of human behavior on roads among other things. We wouldn't be able to make weather predictions and plan ahead without the availability of data. Data Visualization is the best way to communicate a story and put out facts in a way that captures human interests. The world has become organized and the quality of life has drastically improved because of the availability data of the population at large.
Data has become the most important element on the planet but it needs to be ethically extracted, refined, distributed and monetized. Like the way, oil has driven growth and produced wealth for powerful nations, the next wave of growth will be driven by data.
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| Image credit: The Economist |
Fetching the data is no more a primary challenge. How we make products, solve human problems and use data in a constructive will define the next way of technology. Oil has evolved the world into a better place by creating an enormous amount of wealth and prosperity. Data perhaps holds the similar potential and is already responsible for creating four out of five most valuable brands in the world.
Data is to the Information age what oil has been for the industrial age.
The phrase in the title was coined by UK mathematician Clive Humby in 2006.
