My Wife Is a Data Storm
Inlea’s CEO, Xavier Simó, writes an article every fortnigh for Cronica Global. This is one of his most recent ones.
My wife lately asks questions like: “why does Facebook want to be a bank?”, or “why has Microsoft bought Linkedin when they sell word processors?”, or “why is Amazon producing TV series and films if it is an online store?”, “what is happening?”
My reply is simple: she has several devices that allow her to do anything she wants at any given moment and wherever she wants. So, all the companies want to be on her phone. And when I say all of them, I mean all of them.
It is logical because the first and last thing my wife does during the day is look through various apps on her phone. But she can also ask for her breakfast to be delivered to her (although I know she’d prefer for me to bring it to bed for her), listen to music, talk to her business partner, ask for a cab, do video conference meetings, watch movies while she travels or read the daily news. All of this for a very competitive price, or cheaper than if she did it without her devices.
The consequence of this cyber-dependency is that she is not a person, she isn’t a consumer and neither is she a user. My wife and her devices are a storm, but instead of raining water, she rains data. She is what I call a “data storm”.
Imagine a world full of storms that move freely, raining whenever they want. This world already exists and we live in it (as long as climate change doesn’t get worse). And, what do we do in our world with the water that storms produce? – we collect it and store it. In the technological world, this already exists, it is the infrastructures of networks connected to data centres that collect the data we “rain”.
And in our world, what do we do with the water we collect and store? – we sell it. What about in the technological world? – it is also sold. Facebook and Google sell my wife’s data in exchange for advertisement. Amazon sells it in exchange for products. And Uber sells them in exchange for transport.
And in our world, what other business is generated around storms? – they sell products to protect oneself from the rain, another great business is meteorological prediction. Meteorology services use powerful computers to predict where and when it will rain through a lot of data.
Well then, in the technological world, artificial intelligence and big-data helps to predict, thus predicting when my wife will move, what she will want to eat or what she will suddenly like tomorrow at six in the afternoon. And as a consequence, they can propose and suggest products and services. Precisely last week we learnt that the digital fashion section of H&M has come up with a mobile app that can create a “Data Dress”, a dress that is personalized and adapted to the user parting from the information google complies of that person.
This is only the beginning. We will see how non-technological businesses begin to use artificial intelligence, big data and internet of things to suggest, or better said, advertise personalized products at any time and in any place. Welcome to endless advertisement. Welcome to the “perfect storm”.
Xavier Simó
The original article was published through Cronica Global and can be found here.
