So, data is the new oil. I have no knowledge of the provenance of this idea but I think it’s apt in many ways and, if you’ll indulge me, worthy of further exploration. It certainly seems to have gained a fair amount of currency.
What troubles me a little bit is the apparent gleefulness that often accompanies the repetition of this metaphor. Is being the new oil a good thing to be? It’s as though we’ve all been saying data is important for decades and suddenly everyone else is waking up to it and we’re revelling in the new data-fuelled economy. It’s 50′s America and we’re all driving around doing half a mile per gallon in massive Cadillacs with unnecessarily showy tailfins. What’s to worry about? Data is free flowing and plentiful. What could go wrong?
Occasionally there follows some hand wringing about how ill-equipped we traditional researchers are for exploiting this brave new world – our lack of experience and capacity in drilling and refining the new oil. That’s as far as any critique seems to extend. I haven’t seen anyone (which, of course, doesn’t mean nobody has done it) stop to reflect on the fact that reliance on the old oil (and it’s fossil fuel brothers and sisters) has left the world in a bit of pickle and that consequently being the new oil may not be entirely without negative repercussions.
So, over a series of posts I intend to (try to) do that. I will be stretching the “data is oil” metaphor to within an inch of its life then, just for fun, toying with it a bit and stretching it a couple of inches further. I’ll be reflecting on some of the ways in which the data industries are behaving like the oil industry in ways that are fairly unpalatable. It’s a serious business being the fuel for a new economy, it’s not just more Cadillacs and international jet-setting, with them come Govcorp control, unethical drilling and extraction practices, spills and pollution, peak oil and the suppression of alternative technologies. If we’re going to be the new oil then we should probably acknowledge and avoid the ways the old oil has fucked us up and how exactly the same things could happen all over again with data.
We’re about due for a coronal mass ejection. The last one was in the 1800′s and wiped out the telegraph system as that was the only electrical system exposed to nature. When the next one comes and zaps the silicon illusion, big data will be knowing if your neighbour is about to kill you for your meagre foodstuffs, remind me not to chuckle.
In the meantime the pension that can’t be mentioned needs topping up as if it’s business as usual.
Well, that all sounds like fun.