What do you think should be the number one focus of sustainability attention in the world today?
· Climate change?
· Deforestisation?
· Food poverty?
· Healthcare and medical provision?
Any and all of them — maintaining the focus on each, raising societies awareness, changing behaviour and developing potential technological solutions for improving the current situation(s) provide constant challenges and opportunities for individuals and organisations.
So, I’d argue (and I hope you’d agree) that there is no single aspect of sustainability that is any more important than another. But the word sustainability — much like the word digital — is beginning to grow wider and wider in its reach, its understanding and people’s interpretation.
One core enabler for meeting and (we hope) beating the sustainability challenges that we face, is the provision, analysis and relevance of the data that we all produce. Amongst numerous demands — It needs to be accurate, secure and gathered ethically and openly.
Data, data, data — its everywhere and nowhere. We are it and we produce it, we use it and ignore it — it’s an economy, it’s an industry, it’s a resource. Actually, its probably the most valuable resource in the world today. Therefore, like all resources doesn’t it need to be managed, monitored, protected and sustained?
We need to ensure the sustainability of the data that we all produce, we need to protect it and ensure that its accuracy and the information and opinion we take from it is secure and defined.
But how do you make data sustainable? It sounds a crazy thought — right? Data will constantly be produced — it’s a resource that isn’t going to run out after all…
Data sustainability is focused on ensuring that the data we produce in the future is based on fact and on behaviour that has not been unduly influenced by external sources. Let’s look at Facebook data — very clearly (as stated to the US senate) — user behaviour was influenced by external sources — therefore the data that was gathered as a result of the influence can’t be accurate can it?
Now, I fully admit that influences such as peer pressure, marketing and advertising etc. have been around for millennia — and as a result any data that was produced and analysed — had been manipulated in some way. However, the level of data produced today is unprecedented, the influence of external sources (Facebook, Google and partners) is rampant and potentially out of control and our reliance on them for access to our digital services is becoming greater and greater.
Not only do we communicate with each other over platforms provided by Google and Facebook, they provide us with advice, they create (recommend) relationships for us, we use their email, maps, apps, browsers and search to scramble through our days — what is stopping them ever increasing their influence on our behaviour for their own business needs?
Nothing.
Think they won’t? They will.
Both Facebook and Google rely on us and the data the we produce as their main source of income. To constantly grow they need us to give them more data, they need us to use their services more and more, they need to understand more about us. They need to sell this information to advertisers who will (because they also need to grow) continue to try and influence us with more and more personal advertisements and products.
Google and Facebook have created a spiral that they cannot extract themselves from. They need us more and more to continue to grow and need to gather more specific data from us, they need to be seen and show that they are influencing us more — otherwise advertisers will simply go somewhere else.
So, therefore how can we maintain the sustainability of data? How can we ensure that the data we gather from fewer and fewer digital platforms, that are driven by corporate needs is accurate and ‘pure’?
Difficult though it may be — we need to move away from these platforms as our only sources of data and behaviour, we need to develop a way of thinking about, interrogating and gathering data in the real world and much like other types of resources we need to understand what we really need to use it for and how we can preserve it and its integrity for the benefit of all.
