Data Is The New Oil

Michael Klare, the author of Resource Wars and Blood and Oil, wrote that “whoever controls Persian Gulf oil controls the world’s economy and, therefore, has the ultimate lever over all competing powers”. This may soon no longer hold true, as there is a new commodity that has been stealing the limelight from refineries and barrels.

“Data are to this century what oil was to the last one: a driver of growth and change,” writes the Economist.

In an insightful long-read, the Economist explores the reality of the data economy, and life where digital information becomes essential to carry out even the most routine actions and where a digital trail is left behind everywhere one ventures. Whoever controls the data will be sitting at the top of quite an empire, and companies know that. However, trading data is quite not the same as trading oil.

“Digital information is unlike any previous resource; it is extracted, refined, valued, bought and sold in different ways. It changes the rules for markets and it demands new approaches from regulators. Many a battle will be fought over who should own, and benefit from, data,” reads the article.

As the Economist points out, oil is the most traded commodity by value. At the same time, volumes of data are hardly traded at all, and if they are, it is usually not for money. Lack of pricing methodologies, non-existence of an open market, and obscurity of data ownership all make the trading of data even more complex.

Still, it's undeniable that data will play a more and more important role. With this in mind, it is high time to decide how this new commodity should be regulated.

“Conflicts over control of oil have scarred the world for decades. No one yet worries that wars will be fought over data. But the data economy has the same potential for confrontation,” summarizes the Economist.