Debates about personal data have a tendency to be more circular than they are productive. There is – it appears – a tension between individual privacy and control and the power unlocked by mass data collection and analysis. But because the current balance (or imbalance) between the two is largely an emergent property of the system, there is no reason to think that things have to be the way they are just because that is the way they are.
Given, though, that we are where we are, there are two basic approaches to doing something about it. One is essentially to accept the current system but to put controls of various kinds over it to ameliorate the most negative features – GDPR is the most prominent recent example, which also illustrates that different political systems will put the balance point in very different places. The other approach is to look more fundamentally at the underlying model and ask what different pattern of benefits might come from a more radically different approach. That’s what this post does, systematically coming up with what will look to many like a more attractive set of answers.
Mydex has been building practical systems based on these principles for a good while, so the post is based on solid experience. But therein lies the problem. Getting off the current path onto a different one is in part a technical and architectural one, but it is even more a social, political and economic one. As ever, the hard bit is not describing a better future, but working out how to get there from here.