The Daily Briefing
Living life in a data-driven society
A postcard from Gracey about decision-making
June 23, 2035
There is a big difference between how we use data in 2035 and how you use data.
Your entire world is data-driven. Your transport systems rely on data to ensure safe and timely arrival of ships, trucks, planes and cars. Investment firms use big data to guide their investment decisions. The public sector uses data to make government services more efficient, reduce fraud and errors in transfer payments, and improve tax collection. The medical industry aggregates and synthesises clinical records. Many pharmaceutical firms use data in their research and development, to streamline clinical trials. Third parties collect your personal data and sell that to advertisers. You have location-based data, retail data, manufacturing data, public sector data and healthcare data. Your world is awash with data, and almost all business, economic and government decisions are made based on data.
Despite the rapidly growing volume of data, you personally don’t have access to a single piece of data about you and your life. All of your personal decisions are made based on opinions. You seek opinions from friends, doctors, lawyers, accountants, psychiatrists, counsellors, educators, advisors, even self-proclaimed gurus. You have never been able to access your data to make any decision, because it doesn’t exist.
Between 2016 and 2026, the world experienced a significant shift toward increasingly data-intensive, evidence-based decision-making across all walks of life. The shift was fuelled by an explosion in big data and rapid improvements in machine learning algorithms. Increasing volumes of data began to be collected by humans, sensors from devices and autonomous vehicles. All of the data was collected and analysed in the Global Brain.
By 2035, everything about our life is tracked, analysed and measured. Every morning we receive a Daily Briefing. This is a communique that provides each individual with new intelligence warranting attention and analysis, specific to them and their circumstance. Every Daily Briefing is 100% personalised and takes into account the individual’s Whole Person Index, their environment, their level of learning, their health and wellbeing and what they plan on doing that day.
The Daily Briefing is a short, graphical executive summary, which can also be drilled into for more detail on any aspect of the individual’s life. No decision is made without the supporting data. The Briefing also makes broadcasting (TV, radio, spam emails, advertising) obsolete. Every individual receives only the content they will need for that day. It includes news relevant to the individual, music based on their personal preferences and educational content based on what they need to learn next.
In future postcards I’ll show you exactly how we use the Daily Briefing to live fulfilled and happy lives.
Summary
You live in a data-driven world, whereas we live in a data-driven society.
Questions to Explore
- What is human-centred data? Ask Google
- What is the quantified self? Ask Google
- How many connected devices are there? Ask Google
- How much data is there in the world? Ask Google
- How do machines learn? Ask Google
- What is the presidential daily briefing? Ask Google
- What is the best way of making decisions? Ask Google
Postcards from 2035 is a series of profoundly simple interlinking ideas describing life in a highly desirable society, where everything and everyone is advanced, happy, intelligent and problem-free. It’s a blueprint of the world we need to create. The best thing you can do to help us get there is to share with your friends and get the conversation started with the questions this postcard has raised.
