Personal data is territory... not territory a state would defend, but territory a community inhabits, its landscape made up of myriad interactions... natives supposedly gave away their territory for glass beads (they didn’t), are we going to be those digital natives (we probably will)?
I like this analogy, but I think it's more formless than a territory. It's this disjunction that I think is interesting, and needs to be amplified by a metaphor. For us, this is our lives - our personal histories that we want to be kept responsibly, and not amplified or erased without our permission. For the companies, it's just data - lakes of stuff that they can make money from if they get the right algorithms. I'm interested in metaphors that can locate the debate about our data somewhere in the middle ground between these two.
Hi Matt. Great post, very thought provoking. I have recently published a blog inspired by a quote from David McCandless that "data is the new soil". Applying this analogy, your concern would be that the tech giants could be viewed as planting their crops in your own back garden, using the data-soil to grow produce that meets their own purposes but are no respectful to the land. I think more could be made of the sustainability / environmental responsibility analogies that spin off this concept of data-soil. Keen to get your thoughts.
Thanks Barry - the 'data as soil' metaphor is close to Margrethe Vestager's more ecological positioning. I think it's still a bit abstract though - it works for those processing data at scale, as the ecological metaphor helps you be more conscious of long-term sustainability. But I don't think it reflects the individual's experience of data as something personal and historical. It's the gap between these two levels that I think a new metaphor needs to address.
Matt, I am really intrigued your point about effective metaphors. I really liked <a class="u-in-reply-to" title="📑 TADA – A New Look At ‘DATA’" href="https://collect.readwriterespond.com/tada-a-new-look-at-data/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">John Philpin's suggestion of data as energy</a>. However, the problem with 'energy' as a metaphor is that it just does not stick. I think that data as people struggles in the same way. I therefore wonder what the 'hole in the ozone layer' might be?
energy is a really nice idea, but I think it's just as abstract as 'data'. We need something more visceral, and something that evokes the emotions that storing all our data can evoke. For me, the problem with surveillance capitalism is not only privacy, but history - there is a responsibility for caring for our personal histories that just doesn't seem to be on the platforms radar at the moment.
I've been grappling with this one for almost a decade now. The most effective analogy I've come up with (to explain to non-technical people) is also somewhat cumbersome for other purposes, but here it is anyway:
Let's say you walk down the beach (yes, I came up with this while at MIPTV in Cannes ;)), or in the woods. You will leave footprints. Unless the place you were walking is a crime scene, or someone is looking for you, chances are nobody cares about your footprints, and pretty soon they will be gone. But in the digital world, your footprints are captured and logged and hoarded and bought and sod. Those footprints are currency.
I think one of the reasons this is so hard for many people to wrap their heads around is because that meta-level stuff is usually disregarded in the real world. If we want to understand a life, we look at its artefacts. Personal data is a level deeper than that, and correspondingly more abstract.
Hi Lousia! Lovely to hear from you again. I like the footprints analogy, and it's something I've mulled over myself. I'd like to develop something that doesn't see data as a kind of 'exhaust', though. One of the more challenging aspects of personal data is that it is still 'live', even if it's years old - this is why I mentioned the visceral kick you feel when a social platform does an 'on this day' alert to you with an image or post from the past of a now-dead relative or bad experience. This feels a bit more visceral than the footprint analogy would allow.
Personal data is territory... not territory a state would defend, but territory a community inhabits, its landscape made up of myriad interactions... natives supposedly gave away their territory for glass beads (they didn’t), are we going to be those digital natives (we probably will)?
I like this analogy, but I think it's more formless than a territory. It's this disjunction that I think is interesting, and needs to be amplified by a metaphor. For us, this is our lives - our personal histories that we want to be kept responsibly, and not amplified or erased without our permission. For the companies, it's just data - lakes of stuff that they can make money from if they get the right algorithms. I'm interested in metaphors that can locate the debate about our data somewhere in the middle ground between these two.
Hi Matt. Great post, very thought provoking. I have recently published a blog inspired by a quote from David McCandless that "data is the new soil". Applying this analogy, your concern would be that the tech giants could be viewed as planting their crops in your own back garden, using the data-soil to grow produce that meets their own purposes but are no respectful to the land. I think more could be made of the sustainability / environmental responsibility analogies that spin off this concept of data-soil. Keen to get your thoughts.
https://endjin.com/blog/2021/05/data-is-the-new-soil
Thanks Barry - the 'data as soil' metaphor is close to Margrethe Vestager's more ecological positioning. I think it's still a bit abstract though - it works for those processing data at scale, as the ecological metaphor helps you be more conscious of long-term sustainability. But I don't think it reflects the individual's experience of data as something personal and historical. It's the gap between these two levels that I think a new metaphor needs to address.
Matt, I am really intrigued your point about effective metaphors. I really liked <a class="u-in-reply-to" title="📑 TADA – A New Look At ‘DATA’" href="https://collect.readwriterespond.com/tada-a-new-look-at-data/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">John Philpin's suggestion of data as energy</a>. However, the problem with 'energy' as a metaphor is that it just does not stick. I think that data as people struggles in the same way. I therefore wonder what the 'hole in the ozone layer' might be?
energy is a really nice idea, but I think it's just as abstract as 'data'. We need something more visceral, and something that evokes the emotions that storing all our data can evoke. For me, the problem with surveillance capitalism is not only privacy, but history - there is a responsibility for caring for our personal histories that just doesn't seem to be on the platforms radar at the moment.
I've been grappling with this one for almost a decade now. The most effective analogy I've come up with (to explain to non-technical people) is also somewhat cumbersome for other purposes, but here it is anyway:
Let's say you walk down the beach (yes, I came up with this while at MIPTV in Cannes ;)), or in the woods. You will leave footprints. Unless the place you were walking is a crime scene, or someone is looking for you, chances are nobody cares about your footprints, and pretty soon they will be gone. But in the digital world, your footprints are captured and logged and hoarded and bought and sod. Those footprints are currency.
I think one of the reasons this is so hard for many people to wrap their heads around is because that meta-level stuff is usually disregarded in the real world. If we want to understand a life, we look at its artefacts. Personal data is a level deeper than that, and correspondingly more abstract.
Hi Lousia! Lovely to hear from you again. I like the footprints analogy, and it's something I've mulled over myself. I'd like to develop something that doesn't see data as a kind of 'exhaust', though. One of the more challenging aspects of personal data is that it is still 'live', even if it's years old - this is why I mentioned the visceral kick you feel when a social platform does an 'on this day' alert to you with an image or post from the past of a now-dead relative or bad experience. This feels a bit more visceral than the footprint analogy would allow.
Sounds a bit like data is Soylent Green