You and Your Data.inc

In an earlier post I wondered what it would take to shift societal thinking about the ownership and terms of exchange of user data. I suggested that behavioural data, like shopping habits might be an easy, relatively low-risk place to start. Later, I wrote about how cool it would be if this sort data was more portable and my excitement at nascent players such as Karma.

Both posts acknowledge that the ecosystem just isn’t there yet; it’s still very early days. Envisioning the possibilities without the means of delivery is a bit of a struggle. But listening to the artist, Jennifer Lyn Morone speak at the amazing Thinking Digital conference inspired me anew. Her Extreme Capitalism project is brilliant. It is both a critique of the current discourse around the power and value of big data and the role that individuals and corporations should play in realising those things, as well as an invitation to re-imagine it. You listen to her talking about her process and what she’s trying to achieve, here.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the possibilities that the creatively destructive power of digital and technology could unleash on our society and our ways of life. There is ground for thinking this wave of technology-driven societal transformation won’t be like the ones that came before.

Even allowing that every potential revolution spawns all sorts of wildly optimistic or just plain mad predictions isn’t it great to be able to dream? Our track record on delivery isn’t great; human beings have a way of allowing greed, pride and often just stupid incompetence to mess these things up.

Having said that, I remain hopeful that the more dreaming and thinking we do now- whether that’s about the terms of use of our data, justice in a world of big data and algorithm-based decision-making or the possibility of a basic income and how that could work — the less of a mess we’ll make of it.