In my last session for the year, I had an interesting conversation with a client about his skill development, as he has chosen to learn SQL to support his lean process skill acquisition and application and usage of Power BI. This I think is a very good call as they complement each other heavily and should give him some nice opportunities in the future, as data retrieval, collation and most importantly analysis, are going to be growth positions in the next five to ten years.
This is already a very valuable area, but much of it at the internet level has been monopolized by the largest data collectors who use this information to double-down on their drive for consumption through pay-per-click add revenue and incentivization. This drives content and narrative and because it is centralized from a few sources, it influences demand and supply heavily, pushing people toward consuming from narrow pools of not only information, but also goods and services.
You thought you were right?
For example, both Vanguard and BlockRock are two of the top 3 major institutional investors of Netflix, Meta (Facebook) and Twitter - as well as in the top 3 of Apple and Microsoft. But, perhaps what is more telling as to how this works is looking at where we might consume information from. You know those lefties at the New York Times and those alt-right extremists of Fox? Yeah - BlackRock and Vanguard are also top 3 investors in both the left and the right argument too.
My point is, no matter where you consume from or what you believe is the correct narrative, all paths make a small selection of companies and people, far wealthier. And, because they are shareholders in all of the major data collectors, they are able to drive any narrative they choose and they are incentivized to use division and polarization to increase consumption. Oh yeas, BlackRock and Vanguard are also top 3 institutional shareholders of Google and Amazon.
Data has extreme amounts of value but it is not the data itself that is valuable. it is how you use it. The collection and collation to organize it is one thing, but where the value is actually generated is from how knowing that can be applied to change behaviors of groups. at a smaller scale, this is the same at normal companies where someone like my client is able to collect data on various topics and then use it to affect change, whether that be through process development or behavior shifts in order to lean the system and generate additional value for the organization.
Shifting the beach a grain at a time
There is nothing wrong with this, it is a natural part of business and we should essentially be living our own lives in a continuous process of destruction and improvement, disrupting our personal processes, rather than relying on inefficient defaults that are no longer applicable. However, when these same processes are applied uniformly to billions of people across the globe, nudging them all into a narrow bucket selection of belief and behavior, all driven from the same source incentivized to maximize their own wealth at any cost, it is going to get pretty corrupted.
But that is where we are now, so why do I think that more data is going to be better in the future? Well, it is not that there is going to necessarily be that much more data, nor even *different data, but what there will be is decentralized sources of data and data transparency, meaning that an increasing number of people will have visibility and access to use it to alter behavior. That sounds terrible!
However, it is not necessarily terrible if there is low cost to access and wide incentive to apply in narrow cases, where there can be a huge amount of variation and there fore, distribution of usecase, application and competition. Rather than narrative and subsequent activity being controlled by a narrow point with fingers in many pies, there can be many points creating many pies, each operating somewhat independently from another.
This lowers the value of holding information and brings high competition into how that information is being used, with no common agreement as there is when it is all being directed by a common source. this is the value of building into Web 3.0, because it takes back the control of information and provides it freely to all across the blockchains. The explosion of data diving and analysis will be driven by this access to information and the ability to apply what is learned to a narrow and independent usecase.
Centralizing the Network
Then of course, there is the tokenization itself, where in order for those tokens to have value, they are going to need to be connected to usability and that is not just how they can be used, but also whether someone will actually use them. An interesting thing that most don't consider for instance is something like Bitcoin, where it is very possible for the centralized institutions, banks and governments to buy up the supply and control the network - but what happens then?
Just imagine that if I own a Bitcoin and they start doing that, I will find a sell price. Let's say it is 100K. Someone else sells at 500K and another at 1M and so on. Over time, the "banks" own the Bitcoin Network and do with it as they choose after paying an extremely high price for the right, but the value of Bitcoin (or any token) is tied to usage.
This is all opt-in, meaning no one needs to use Bitcoin, so after selling all of the tokens to the centralized institutions, the average person opts-out of BTC and into something else if they feel that there is more incentive elsewhere. And obviously, when a narrow group control and maximize at the detriment of the majority, given the option many will move to greener pastures. This means "owning" a network comes with responsibility to make sure that the userbase will not churn and the token lose value through loss of belief.
This is why while cryptocurrencies can act as currencies, they needn't only act as currencies. They are all kinds of assets and tokens that can be applied in a myriad ways to encourage usage. All they are, are bits of information and while tracking and collating is useful, it is how that information is applied to affect behaviors that matter. Apply it poorly, and people will abandon usage in the same way that a company with an increasingly poor product will lose market share to companies who at least seem to offer a better alternative.
There are many aspects to consider that are along these lines and I will try to look at some of them in more detail later, but what is important to remember is one thing:
Knowledge isn't Power
It is how you use it that has the potential to be powerful.
We are in a stage of society where there is increasing visibility on data, but that is currently only accessible to a very narrow set of eyes. However, we are entering into a phase where we are able to make much of that data visible and transparent, which will allow us to use it in the ways we choose, which is why I think so many data jobs will be created, as all kinds of organizations start "mining" the data to turn it into useful information that they can apply. This bring high competition to data usage and therefore, lowers the value for the few, while generating a lot more compounding value across the many.
Then, because of the capabilities of web 3.0 tokenization and potential to own the network, we ourselves are incentivized and enabled to better use our data and wealth to earn, distributing more wealth wider and giving room for independent innovation to cater to localized or narrow groups of the population, with highly tailored "content" that the consumer is not only willing to consume, but also look to contribute to and own as well.
Game changer?
At the end of the day, information is rather useless until it can be translated into a process and communicated to actually affect that change. At the moment, it is happening, but it is coming from largely "single-source" profit maximizers who do not care what happens, as long as they make a little more ROI on their investment, they can push into the expansion of their portfolio I ways designed to extract even more for the next round.
Decentralization of information and data doesn't change the game, it just allows billions more people to play.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
By the time Hive was born, I was taking some Data Science / Machine Learning courses. Some introductory in python and one on Coursera offered by Standford professor about Deep Learning where I was able to build a neural network to identify handwritten digits.
I wanted to get a deeper understanding of all-around data and how big centralized companies are using it to "target" us. It was a nice interesting learning experience, enough to realize the amount of info "they" have from all our habits.
Later on, while digging into data and crypto, I stumbled upon Ocean protocol, "The open data protocol" and was happy to see, blockchain offers us tools to fight against data property centralization.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=78&v=FEeicvNSyk4&feature=emb_logo
Once you did this, were you enthused or scared by the power they have?
Already was aware of it but I realized that have even much more power than what we think I was not scared but I value much more my privacy.
This line got me,all along we've been quoting this,but taking a deeper look into the "Knowledge is power" phrase,one can really say that it not just about the knowledge but how to use and maximize it. Thanks for sharing this awesome content.
Most things that people say have a lot of information behind them, that most don't know. These types f lines are just a hook for all of that information, not all that is needed to apply it.
Like, "You are what you eat" :)
You're definitely right. There is more to what we read on the surface. We need more exposition on things like this. This is the sure way we can be productive with them
Let's say we should create wealth from our data, and not let the monopolized data collectors make money off it.
The challenge is the organization of it and then, the practical application. Look at Hive as an example, it has progressed a lot, yet most people just complain, as if it is meant to be like Facebook or Amazon in polish. It is not easy to get a room full of cats to line up against a wall by asking them.
Information is power, I guess
And how it is used. Some are willing to do some pretty terrible things with it - because there incentive to do so.
Obviously the learnt to which people go with certain information can never be fathomed. Our capacity to use information to the detriment of others just to earn a buck baffles me
many bucks in this case though. Essentially, the system will keep consolidating into a full monopoly of all value unless it is changed.
Do we even have the will to change it?
Unless we have the ability to put the available information into a process and make it useful for our benefit or for society benefit, it will be just a scrapyard. We will find lots of things in that scrapyard but at the end, we have to add value to it so that it can benefit us.
Most of what we create is scrap, it doesn't stop it from being useful in the form of data. What I am hoping is that as we start to incentivize differently, what we demand changes, and therefore supply changes too and because it is being driven by many, it will distribute wider and give more opportunity for innovation from the wider user base, rather than suggestion from the center.
I think the publicity of information on places like Hive and Bitcoin are going to really drive the adoption of places like Monero where transactions are verified on the chain but the two end points are not traceable (my very simplistic understanding of how it works.. could be completely wrong :D) in the future. I'm biding my time to get in on those, I had a bit of Dash for a while but lost that when the faucet seemingly stopped responding to anyone's inquiry and shut down. The beauty of it.. lol
I try to tell people like my dad that it doesn't matter what's on the ol' tube, the same people are still funding both sides of this false dichotomy. He's getting there but still believes in a lot of things that aren't right. I guess we have to have our own beliefs and hold onto something, uprooting it all mentally is a mind fuck for sure.
I think with how they've acted in the recent memory here, they are trigger happy and that will drive people to get out of things, rather than suffer. They can certainly buy up all of the Bitcoin but what then? We will just use something different! The masses are what drives a lot of these things, not the few.
Never got into dash - hold a little Monero - just in case :)
Yeah, unless it comes through a lot of pain, it is probably going to take a while for people to understand what is actually going on. The desire is, not to explore this at all.
The more we realize this, the less chance they will risk trying to centralize it :) they can get in, but know that if they expand too much, they will pay a very high price.
People still have a hard time seeing change as it happens. Many saw the beginnings of personal computers as a waste of time/resources, then the internet as a meaningless thing, it took time and a few visionaries to see the value, it will take time for people to see and learn about the value of their own data, and the importance of their ownership of the data.
When "Open Source" first came around people looked at it with a lot of mistrust, now it is becoming more and more of an every day thing, programs built and offered virtually free, this was something that Microsoft could not abide, so they bought Git-Hub, so now a lot of the open source people have moved to Git-Lab. This should give people an idea of what happens when a centralized authority actively tries to control a group of independent decentralized people.
I used this example today, as a long time ago, my eldest brother said "the internet is a fad" - he also said, digital cameras will never replace film, electric cars will never be mass adopted and, crypto is a scam.
Yep - the land of many forks.
I had a day when my thoughts went down that exact route, but I don't think that THE GAME will stay the same. China will take over the old ways and Musk will drag us down underground and up into the sky. South America is broke and India is in a deep recession. Russia actively wants more territory and North Korea has entered a fatal famine. The Time that the USA has been the cultural leader of the world seems to be over as well. What's next now?
I think we'll see 2025 coming faster than expected and nothing will be the same again.
I agree, we are moving into "unchartered territory" as far as living memory goes, but all of these things have happened before in one way or another. the difference is going to be now they are truly global events, but we also have a truly global way to communicate, interact and transfer value. Should be interesting times for pain and innovation.
That‘s true, it‘s unchartered, I just hope we don‘t kill our electric grid before we wake up.
Data and knowledge are there to benefit from for those who have the skills and wisdom to use them. Yes, opportunities are more available if you invest in the game. Otherwise, nothing changes.
Wisdom is the thing - for information to have value, it needs to be used wisely. Wisely doesn't mean that it benefits others - but it would be good if it did :)
Which is quite true just like the quote you used that knowledge isn't power but how you use it has the potential to be powerful and at the same time goes with information which can be relevant with the right source.