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Data: Which is it most Similar to? Oil, Water or Nuclear?
Data effects every aspect of our lives. Analysts are struggling to define the right analogy to describe its effect on humans.
In 2006, Clive Humby, a UK mathematician, compared data to oil.
Humby said that “data is the new oil. It’s valuable, but if unrefined it cannot really be used. It has to be changed into gas, plastic, chemicals, etc. to create a valuable entity that drives profitable activity; so must data be broken down, analyzed for it to have value.”
But the oil analogy isn’t free of positive connotations.
Edwin Diender, Chief Digital Transformation Officer at Huawei, says that “Oil is greasy. Oil is dirty. Oil smears and leaves nasty, usually permanent stains. Oil pollutes the environment.”
James Bridle, artist and writer, considers the misuse of data and negative connotations when he says that, rather than oil, data is “like nuclear waste, data leaks and breaches: critical excursions and chain reactions lead to privacy meltdowns and the collapse of governments.”
More recently though, IDC and KPGM have selected water as a better analogy. David Slánský, Partner at KPGM, said that “in today’s economy data is available to everyone but, as with water, everything depends on being able to trust the quality of the source of that data, understand how it flows and who has access to it. If you don’t treat water properly then it gets polluted and becomes unusable. Leakage, misuse and access rights are also increasingly common problems. If you block access to it, people suffer.”
Thanks for the recognition, Dick. Much appreciated. Here’s the link to the publication you reference: Data is Like Water.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/data-like-water-%E8%89%BE%E5%BE%B7%E6%96%87-edwin-diender