90% of today’s existing data was produced over the last two years. A single month of data produced by humanity exceeds the sum total of data produced between the invention of writing and that of the iPod.
The topic is boundless. Today, with social media, uninterrupted web connections via various devices and the skyrocketing number of connected objects, data production has grown exponentially. And it isn’t about to stop. The future of this data, its ownership, and the people who will be allowed to use it are three of the major business, legal and citizen issues which will need to be addressed over the next 15 years.
In the field of communications and media, this data has enabled the creation of new forms of content and a different way of proposing added value. In terms of media, data journalism blends innovation and classicism in the generation of content. The Guardian’s exposure of the UK MP expenses scandal, or the ongoing work of websites such as owni.fr, are examples which demonstrate how data usage maximizes the objectification of articles, simplifies source-sharing, and contributes to empirically dispelling ethical quandaries.
Public institutions and large companies use data from the point of view of communications, grouped under the “open data” banner. Creators and holders of data make data accessible to the citizens and consumers from whom it originated. Between an aspiration for transparency and the appeal of secrecy, most public authorities combine a willingness to make their data accessible, motivated by States and the EU, all the while finding it difficult to identify associated value-added services and business models which could be created using the data.
Another data creation trend which is becoming more prominent is that of “self-tracking,” which incorporates several dimensions, be it “life-logging” (digitizing all of one’s key life stages) or a “quantified-self” (generating data about oneself to better understand oneself). This has inspired geeks as well as people after statistics or 2.0 health advocates.
In the future, and without falling into science fiction, these practices will be combined with cognitive psychology tools, thereby implementing a first step into digital immortality, creating a valid electronic copy of a person, by aggregating all of their memory, behavioral, physical and cognitive data.