I’m in a great conversation on the value of data. Major issue that is raised is anonymity — it is really hard to anonymize big data:
Anonymity might be easy for diabetes, hard for Crohn’s, impossible for ALS. #SXDataNewOil #SxSW
— Miles Skorpen (@milesskorpen) March 11, 2012
Seems like one solution might be creating a new, regulated, profession, like doctors or lawyers. Not exactly the crowd-source and internet-loved solution, but I’m not sure we can trust society with utterly open information … while there clearly is enormous potential value to analyzing this information.
The difference is that doctors and lawyers work with individual clients with whom they have contracts. The value in analyzing data comes from analyzing all of it, which wouldn’t happen in an opt-in structure with your data professional (which would not share the individual relationship of a doctor or lawyer, but could be contractual). If it’s not opt-in, it’s status quo: service agreements, privacy policies, and lots of (well-placed) consumer mistrust.
I see the ‘customer’ being companies with data. Limited people/firms can centralize data analysis and haven a legal obligation not to do things like release it to insurance companies (if genome related).
I could also imagine some kind of certification process for stored data at the next generation of companies like Fitbit.