2020: The Silo Wars Intensify. And Your Personal Data?

• December 31, 2019
• StJohn Deakins
• no comments

Creating a more #sustainabledata ecosystem.

Techcrunch has reported that in 2020 Facebook will launch a new Operating System to protect itself against competitors such as Google. And so the ‘Silo Wars’ Intensify. Along with the state ‘balkanisation’ of the Internet, the proliferation of Operating Systems is part of a broader trend. The attempt to contain the digital activity (personal data) of Digital Citizens in closed ‘silos’, be they national or corporate.

In 2019 the world used a handful of Operating systems: iOS from Apple, Windows from Microsoft and Android from Google. In 2020, Huawei will roll out its new HarmonyOS (the new ‘China’ OS?). Now Facebook will follow with an Operating System of its own… 

The mantra: Control the Operating System to build a bigger protective moat around services, users, the users personal data – and the AI that can be generated from it. 

Data Democratisation beyond the Silo

This would be absolutely fine if users had real time access to their own data. The ability to carry (port), gift or trade it between all the silos they inhabit. Doing so: as, how, and whenever they wished, with digital agency.

But they don’t.

The irony is that, just like global trade, fewer barriers and a better balance between all digital participants would result in a far greater volume and value of data flows.

This is why Digital Citizens need real-time data portability of primary data from all of these silos. Plus a copy of data from anywhere else that it resides, be it smart-health, smart-cities or smart grocery deliveries. Individual digital rights provide the foundation for this, but the new value created goes far beyond this to the broader digital community.

A Sustainable Data Ecosystem

And the remarkable thing: Empowering Digital Citizens with copies of their own data, and enabling them to run their own personal AI on it, will make the entire global data ecosystem more efficient, valuable and sustainable – not least the owners of the big data silos and Operating Systems. This is the path to a healthy and sustainable data ecosystem.

Like planetary sustainability, digital sustainability is an inevitable eventual destination, but the question is when: 5, 50 or 500 years? The choice is ours.

A world of Sustainable Data is what we’re striving to create at CitizenMe.