After the party. By Peter Firth

The most valuable raw commodity of the 21st century may be how old you are, when you were married, how often you shop, and above all where. It has become crucial for companies to have ownership of personal data. If data were to become rare, the power structure in business would change dramatically.

Myths and anecdotes surrounding the predictive power of Big Data are everywhere. Organisations are starting to unlock the power behind large data sets, and decipher meaning from once unwieldy statistics. In recent years we’ve learned that Big Data can identify when a flu epidemic is about to break out, it can predict when you’re pregnant even before you know it yourself, it can even predict when you’re likely to die. While these stories make marketers giddy with excitement, they also make consumers uneasy. They signify a change in the relationship between individuals and companies: we’re still customers, but now thanks to Big Data, we’re also the product.

Big Data is a phenomenon that is defined by size; it relies on the principle that the more information you can collect about your customer, the more you can anticipate their needs and sell to them. Now nascent shifts are occurring that may usher us into a period where information is not freely accessible to companies, and consumers reclaim the power and monetary value of the data they generate. Put simply, data may become rare.

FROM PROFUSION TO SCARCITY

There are numerous ways that people may change their habits online to usher companies into an era of data scarcity. The first and most obvious is a simple pulling back on the personal details they share, and opting out of services that log their movements and behaviour, such as cookies. The second is the use of new platforms and services that hide our tracks online.

Between customers and organisations, trade-offs have started to emerge as companies subtly barter for access to our personal information. We relinquish this information in exchange for one-off discounts, access to social networks, and to bypass online commercials. Now as more people understand the direct implications of these exchanges – where the amount of information that a company has denotes how prosperous and profitable it is – many are starting to pull back on how much they share. After all, why should your lack of privacy directly translate to someone else’s profit?

Research conducted by London-based think tank The Future Laboratory over recent years shows just how far and quickly this question is creeping into our collective consciousness. In October 2012, we found that out of a sample of 2,000 uK citizens 22 per cent of the respondents were unwilling to share their information in exchange for a personalised service, while 16 per cent were unwilling to share in return for cash or rewards. By March 2013, the proportion of people unwilling to share information in return for a personalised service and cash or rewards had increased to 39% and 27% respectively. There is so much latent panic, even a Fair Data Kitemark which accredits companies that behave responsibly towards the data they collect was established in the uK at the start of 2013.

Information is now considered part of an organisation’s asset base, so as a notion, the possession of data has become less ephemeral. With this, companies are quickly learning that the power of data lies not just in owning the most, but in owning data that a competitor doesn’t have access to. Just as with any commodity, the more common it is, the less it is worth. Consequently, our data is becoming a pseudo-intellectual property, coveted, owned and withheld. All of a sudden individuals’ details are crystallised as something with an intrinsic value. David Siegel, author of “Pull: The Power of the Semantic Web to Transform Your Business”, sees this as a notable power tilt in favour of the individual: “Personal data, and the control of personal data, will transform today’s customer from a passive consumer into an active market participant with more power than even the largest multinational brands.”

With the ongoing establishment of such a property right, our online habits are starting to lend themselves to the withholding of information. For instance, through the simple decision to keep your work life on LinkedIn, and your personal life on Facebook, you are sharding your identity. Within these networks we limit which lifestyle facets we expose, choosing to show friends, employers and brands either our public or private face. A big chunk of hidden transactions currently occurs over the hardly traceable so called deep web, and in the future we may even shard our identities over secure separate networks, like privately owned Meshnets.

The tentative way that some people are starting to use the web is fuelled by the permanence of the online world. Messages, postings, likes and shares are all logged on systems which are not owned in any way by the individual. To get an impression of the permanence of the digital world, simply enter this uRL into your web browser

[www2. warnerbros.com/spacejam/movie/jam.htm] and find the website of the 1996 Warner Bros film “Space Jam”, perfectly preserved. In response to this permanence, developers are giving people peace of mind by providing self-destructing message platforms like SnapChat, where messages are deleted permanently as soon as they are read. Justdelete.me is another service which enables people to destroy their own data. The online directory of uRLs encompasses everything from Amazon to Airbnb, and enables users to delete their account from each web service with one click, vanishing without a trace.

Data scarcity may also come from governmental and geopolitical forces. The balkanisation of domestic networks stemming from different regions, will constrict the flow of data between countries. The most prominent example is China’s Golden Shield Project, which acts as a digital customs office for the Big Data universe.

SURVIVING SCARCITY

Data becoming rare will instigate a new wave of business practices and hierarchies, as companies find ways to make use of their existing insights, and barter for data from rivals.

Two possible extremes may emerge. In the first, companies follow a highly capitalised approach to data, where it is coveted and shared with a select network of allies. The second may see the creation of a personal data marketplace, where individuals can withhold, sell and auction off rights to their data.

“Imagining that data becomes the most central component of business, along with human talent, and financial capital,” says Kenneth Cukier, data editor of The Economist. “We would witness an era of data scarcity, where subordinate companies would cluster around those who had pre-existing infrastructures – stockpiles of data – in a similar way to how Facebook and Zynga used to operate, and how the business keiretsu operate in Japan.”

In Japan, after the economic downturn struck in 2008, businesses were able to negate the effects of the recession by sticking to traditional business interdependencies, known as keiretsu. Each major keiretsu is connected to a bank, which controls subordinate businesses from the top, acting as a monitor and supplying extra capital in the event of a crisis. Each keiretsu is restricted to its own topdown structure, and trading with a rival keiretsu is forbidden. In a time of monetary scarcity each keiretsu is able to borrow money from the trading house at the top, and order is preserved.

As the age of information advances, this model for dealing with scarcity may be adopted towards data. As there is a greater need for data husbandry, new information cartels could form, which share only within their keiretsu, but rather than Sony Bank, or Mitsubishi Trust and Banking, the data keiretsu will be controlled by those who have access to the most data, and are the best at reading it. Google, Amazon and Facebook would become appealing prospects to pay tribute to, in return for access to their titanic sets of data. Retailers are starting to understand the benefits of partnering with an information powerhouse. uK multinational Arcadia credits much of its £33.8m ($51.5m, €39.1m) profit rise at the end of last year to Topshop’s social media presence, specifically its 750,000 Facebook fans.

Although this vision of a data keiretsu flies in the face of web 2.0 and its founding principles of open sourcing, knowledge sharing and free collaboration, there is a more empowering option for individuals. Data scarcity may bring about an active, atomistic marketplace for personal data, where people have the power to trade it openly in exchange for products, services and information. These exchanges will be explicit, and people will be in complete control of which companies can have access to their data, and for how long. Big Data mediators could emerge who will manage our data presence, perhaps locking the data that people generate in a vault, only to be released when the price of specific kinds of sets reaches a high. In a similar model to Doc Searls’s idea of the Intention Economy, people will be able to venture their data forth to a crowd of organisations that vie for it, and trade to the company with the best offer or policy. This new data-empowered customer will be able to barter, trade and use their new pseudo-intellectual property to receive better service from brands and organisations, forming a new network currency that is empowering and constricting. Empowering, as the people are no longer subject to a data stealth tax, but constricting, as increasingly they are running out of places to hide in the Big Data revolution.

This shows: scarcity has the potential to change the rules of the Big Data game. As more platforms emerge for people to take control of the empirical facts generated from the welter of their daily lives, power might ultimately tip in favour of the consumer.

Peter Firth is senior journalist and technology editor for LS:N Global, the trend forecasting news network of The Future Laboratory. Since April 2012, Peter has been technology publication T3’s future columnist, unpacking the big questions surrounding our long-term relationship with technology. More recently, Peter appeared on the BBC World Service, and in the pages of the Sunday Times Style discussing a range of topics from the future of human communication, to how the under-11s are re-shaping the world of technology, media, retail and the way we engage with brands.