Data - The Crude Oil of today's Digital Age
The World’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data. Data - The Crude Oil of today’s digital age, in which every individual, through Internet activity, leaves a footprint of personal information, which is controlled by others. In fact, just like oil in the past century, data is now the most valuable resource in the world - an engine of growth & change. In 2017, the Economist published a widely referenced article claiming that oil had been replaced as the world’s most valuable resource by data - specifically, data captured from users by tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. The Economist painted a bleak picture of a future where the Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google monoliths have so much data at their fingertips that they dominate the global “data economy”. These giants vacuum up vast troves of data that help build a digital profile of every individual, including the person’s preferences, foibles and secrets. Data collection can reveal as muc...