Courtesy BBC News “Data is not the New Oil” (2017)
How do you know when a pithy phrase or seductive idea has become fashionable in policy circles? When The Economist devotes a briefing to it.
In a briefing and accompanying editorial earlier this summer, that distinguished newspaper argued that data is today what oil was a century ago.
As The Economist put it, “A new commodity spawns a lucrative, fast-growing industry, prompting anti-trust regulators to step in to restrain those who control its flow.” Never mind that data isn’t particularly new (though the volume may be) – this argument does, at first glance, have much to recommend it.
Just as a century ago those who got to the oil in the ground were able to amass vast wealth, establish near monopolies, and build the future economy on their own precious resource, so data companies like Facebook and Google are able to do similar now. With oil in the 20th century, a consensus eventually grew that it would be up to regulators to intervene and break up the oligopolies – or oiliogopolies – that threatened an excessive concentration of power.
Many impressive thinkers have detected similarities between data today and oil in yesteryear. John Thornhill, the Financial Times’s Innovation Editor, has used the example of Alaska to argue that data companies should pay a universal basic income, another idea that has become highly fashionable in policy circles.
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