Damien Mulley

Is information/data the new oil?

Those that own the rights to extract it and sell it can be worth dynasty-like fortunes. Those that are employed to drill or extract it can make huge money. Those that can predict or find a new source of information with their technology. Those that can build services or products that use this information (think cars or plastics). Those that can improve on those products. Those that lobby legislatures to ensure their safety tech must be used when these products are built, too can make money.

Facebook is the most public owner of rich data with lots of people exploiting and using it. The clubcard companies, the postal services. All data rich “fields”. Oil is made from rotting carbon entities. Data is made from our own usage patterns which we hand over in full knowledge or in full ignorance. Is data a natural resource?

Collusion. Firefox plugin allows you to see all the third parties that are tracking your movements across the Web.

Using data to spot when the iPad 3 lands. Literally.

Seems that second sentence was in a draft post since October so pushing it live now.

And now for something completely…

See William Gibson on data and even rumour and the value of it:

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 7th, 2012 at 4:53 pm and is filed under irishblogs, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.