Daily Post 1496
ENGAGE WITH DATA!
Engage with data to engage with the world. That is the only currency in the world today. People have been calling it as the new oil. It is way way beyond that. Not only is it valuable from a financial point to view, , literally it adds value to anything and everything. What we have been describing objective and empirical all our lives, is right there is front of us, to be practiced on a regular basis and in every sphere of life. But as it stands today, both in life and law, India may take another generation to understand its value.
What value you attach to data is the value it would give to you. You have to chart the direction and trajectory and it would never fail you. Somebody asked a question as to what percentage of Facebook’s revenue came from data and the answer was 100%. Data has been transformed into trillions of dollars and it continues to increase unabated, even COVID-19 has not been a dampener. This is what IT behemoths are all about. Though data is all so powerful, yet we are allowing most of it to go out of the hands of individuals, communities and that nation, then whose battle we are fighting. For sure it cannot be our battle.
These companies are super states now. What they sowed a decade or two ago, they are reaping it now. The vision and technology is so complex, that it is beyond the understanding of the best of the nation states. The congressional hearings have not be been able to deliver anything even after holding sessions over and over again. The most recent one led to a battle between the political adversaries themselves. Do governments have a policy of data engagement; whose, when, where, how much, with what intensity and impact? What is our stand on it?
Data protection is only the security dimension of the story. The real story is above and beyond it. It is power to create, collate and engage with data in the most complex business and technical mode, to harness, exploit, commercialise and deliver returns, unheard in the history of mankind. While you bring economic betterment to large sections of society, important sectors will automatically get sorted out. This engagement cannot come out of thin air. This is an engagement with the whole economy and indirectly with the relevant power apparatus of this country. If China is able to engage with its Big Data the way it wants, it has the potential of leading the world in Artificial Intelligence. The result can be that rewarding.
ENGAGING WITH DATA IS AN ENGAGEMENT WITH GROWTH AND PROSPERITY.