The new paradigm of a data-based reality

Heat maps, geolocation maps, in-store traffic distribution, command and control centres, etc... Data scientists and digital analysts are the new cartographers of the digital economy. Are we living through the awakening of Big Brother, or is data the new fuel of the digital age?

The paradigm of a traceable reality

Picture a man or a woman, a boy or a teenage girl, walking down the street, and with every step their footprint leaves hundreds, thousands of data -numbers, identifiers, tastes and preferences, devices used, social media profiles, latitude and longitude, dwell time, product consumption, information searches, etc- hundreds, thousands of data left at the mercy of any curious or ill-intentioned passer-by. What could easily look like a comic book is the closest thing to the reality we are living through right now.

Data scientists and digital analysts are the new cartographers of the digital economy.

And the question that arises is whether we really want to protect that woman or that man from their “data leaks”, or rather to turn the traceable information we have today into value for that boy or that teenage girl. We are not an army of data providers; the reality is simply more traceable now than at any other moment in history. We are not more careless than in the past; we simply now spend more time each day interacting with people and things through the Internet. And every “click”, every “tap” and every spoken word leaves a trace. That is the new paradigm.

This is a world in which most of the data being created, and that has been created throughout our entire history, is being generated right now. Yes, now. People running searches, people sharing messages with people, people talking to robots, devices measuring people, sensors measuring machines, machines learning from the information of sensors, devices and people, and algorithms giving birth to new information.

Perhaps the claim that 90% of all the data ever created in the history of humanity has its origin in digital and was created in the last two years is by now an obsolete claim. While you read this post, you are creating data: reading time, browser used, device geolocation, the traffic source that brought you to this post, links to other previous identifiers, make and model of your device, battery percentage, timestamp, and the list can go on until it exhausts the disbelief of those not initiated into the wonderful world of data. And that same automated data, and automation via artificial intelligence, give rise to new data. Data creates data.

While you read this post, you are creating data (...) Data creates data.

If your reaction on reading this is fear, I want to invite you to start working on another new observer within you. Give me a few lines to balance your view of this new world of data:

• Did you know that according to Linkedin “Statistical Analysis and Data Mining” is and has been the second most in-demand category of professional skills in 2016 and 2017 across the planet. (Source: Linkedin)
• Did you know that President Barack Obama hired an expert analytics department 5 times larger than the one he used in the first election in 2008 to win his second election (source: MIT Technology Review)
• Did you know that there are already algorithms that are full members of boards of directors (source: The Observer)
• Did you know that a large share of governments is already using technology and data analysis as a lever for the tax auditing of their taxpayers (Source: Bloomberg).
• Did you know that approximately 60% of cars are already connected in the United Kingdom and that in less than a decade the figure is expected to be 100%, and 83% of them autonomous cars (Source: Statista)
• Did you know that through big data analytics and machine learning it is possible to spot early behavioural patterns relating to cell degeneration in order to anticipate the detection, treatment and cure of cancer (Source: Cornell Research)

And finally, did you know that all these possibilities for progress point to a less prolific future for Europe compared with other parts of the planet -America and Asia- as a result of a regulatory exercise that becomes mandatory in May 2018 (The General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR).

Data protection: Prohibit or Educate

The new legislation on third-party data offers a complicated picture for all of us who work with data and who believe that the secret is not in prohibiting, but in educating and training users. We all have to start being the owners of what we want to share. The difference between who we say we are and who we are is only a matter of technology and focus. We cannot regulate the truth.

Let me make an aside by way of reflection on the tendency to over-regulate. Someone said, with a certain sarcastic tone, that the USA creates, China copies and Europe regulates. Perhaps we live in a geographical area with a certain tendency to protect and regulate. To my mind, the reflection to be made lies in the attitude we decide to take towards a present in which the rules of the game have already changed: Prohibit vs Educate, an attitude towards change management. This is a controversy that has run throughout human history. Those who believe in prohibition as a lever for change management are only looking for short-term results, or perhaps they lost their trust in human beings long ago and argue for a level of generalised witlessness. Those who believe in educating have a more natural and healthy relationship with the passing of time. If you want a population to change its behaviour in a short space of time with respect to a fact or a trend that everyone recognises as memorable, which is the best option? Your answer will place you directly in the “prohibitionist” or “educator” cluster. I'm not making a case for either side. And personally, I always wanted to be taught how to fish.

Overprotecting a citizen who demonstrates in their day-to-day life a total lack of concern for the management of their personal information, in my view, shows that the legislator is not legislating for the citizen, but from a place of resentment towards the power that large corporations accumulate in the digital age. Asking a company to justify, in real time and within a user's browsing space on a mobile screen, the origin of the data that led a company to create that advertising content inside the app, and to solve this challenge in 5 inches, is nothing but an exercise in legislative blindness. All the more so when the user whose privacy wishes are (apparently) being violated had just posted, yesterday, a photo of his wife and his son on holiday on Railay beach, in Krabi Thailand, right in the middle of the holiday season. Are we protecting someone whose sensitivity about privacy is questionable and who, after decades of warnings that holiday information is never shared in real time, keeps on doing it, or are we legislating because a political group, or perhaps some specialist politicians, had a personal run-in with a bank or a telecommunications company? I don't dare to answer, and my answer is clear.

Let's not be cynical, let data create value and let's make it possible to withdraw consent for the use of our data, and not necessarily in real time. And let's be civic-minded, there are times when our lack of privacy saves lives. We are on the verge of the strategic collapse of an entire geographical area because of the dissatisfaction of a group of people who, aiming to protect vulnerable citizens, have created a scenario in which Europe will compete on unequal terms with other continents such as Asia or America, what is the opportunity cost of overprotection? I think that calculation is still pending.

If the fuel for generating new spaces of differentiation in the digital economy lies in data, why do we limit the space of competition around the possibilities of activating data?

Let's not be cynical, let data create value and let's make it possible to withdraw consent for the use of our data, and not necessarily in real time.

And let's be civic-minded, there are times when our lack of privacy saves lives.

When in June 2015 Google released to all its users the information available about each one of us through Google my account, it sent a chill through part of the planet. In my experience, most of the population (Android share: 53.2% in the USA and 89.4% in Spain | ComScore MobiLens, Statista) is still not aware of it and wakes up to its “jaw-dropping moment” when I have tried activating the "Google My Account" service live for them. And I'm sorry, I'm afraid so, we have all at some point run a search for Justin Bieber or Belén Esteban.

When some of you see the word DATA or data written down, the first reflection or the first thought is surely the number of outrages “all those big companies” can get up to with my data. I think about business for corporations and also about value for civil society. And both possibilities at the same time. It all comes down to the observer. There are no value judgements here. We are living through a new Oppenheimer-style dichotomy, “nuclear fission vs. atomic bomb”. Now the choice is between the protection of privacy versus economic development. If at this stage anyone doubts the possibilities of creating value from data, it means we have not yet connected facts with searches.

When some heartless person decides to set off a bomb at a concert full of teenagers or to let a truck loose down a pedestrian street in a European capital, don't we all make use of the advantages of Facebook's “Safety Check” service? Let's not be cynical, data creates value.

[DEDICATION] To the Professionals of the 2nd edition of the Digital Transformation Management Programme at IE Business School.

Read the original POST on the DIVISADERO blog