Identity and personal data will be vital aspects of living in the future, says will.i.am, a musician and entrepreneur
“AT A LUNCH at the World Economic Forum five years ago, guests were asked to predict what people would care about around 2019. My mind raced through thoughts about identity and data. When the host, Marc Benioff, the founder and chairman of Salesforce, turned to me, I stated: “idatity”. Identity and data are increasingly intertwined. The term I coined that day evokes the need for people to be more aware of how they safeguard and share their information.”
“Personal data needs to be regarded as a human right, just as access to water is a human right. The ability for people to own and control their data should be considered a central human value. The data itself should be treated like property and people should be fairly compensated for it.”
Essentially I am in agreement with the principle here, but the ideology of ‘data’ I still find confounding. This statement: “The ability for people to own and control their data should be considered a central human value.” – is quite useless to the average person – we are primarily people not users, customers or consumers, but to the data factories we are almost fungible but non-tradeable assets. But it is difficult if not impossible today to own or control our data. Yet we are already compensated for it through the services we use, free web search, free maps, free social connections. Data is also economically anti-rival, the more times it’s replicated the more value is created. After many years advocating for ‘personal data’ I have concluded that it is not something that people can be made to care about. Our identity is important as is our attention, yet data is not a currency to be banked or saved or traded. I still have no answers only questions.
Read the full article at the Economist: We need to own our data as a human right—and be compensated for it