Harry Keen, CEO and co-founder of Hazy, on whether data really is the new fur.
A lot has changed since Tesco Clubcard-architect Clive Humby declared data as ‘the new oil’, back in 2006. It was a premonition for a decade of growth across the tech sector. Data, rightly or wrongly, has functioned as fuel for a generation of tech giants, spawning the world’s first trillion dollar company, along with numerous apps, services, startups and unicorns.
Yet in recent months, we’ve seen a shocking succession of data handling scandals at some of the globe’s largest companies. The general public appears to have woken up to the disturbing possibility that their personal data has been used for purposes far beyond what we should consider reasonable. Consequently, 2018 has seen a marked shift in public opinion, demonstrated most clearly by Facebook’s first ever decrease in the rate of user growth....