Data Is the New Oil: Wealth and Wars on the Web

Oil has an unnerving ability to blow up the economy, cause wars and disrupt ecosystems. It’s a paramount resource and industry creator, spurring trillion dollar economies mining, refining and managing the asset. In the 21st century, we’re experiencing the dawn of a new fuel, also poised to create opportunity and turmoil: data. Multibillion-dollar industries, from search engines to social networking to online advertising, have been built on the aggregation of personal data, information the World Economic Forum likens to a “new type of raw material … on par with capital and labor.” We’re fighting a war on oil now. Will an entirely different war on data soon break out? We believe so.

The “Data is Oil” project is the brainchild of two personal data experts, Michael Fertik, CEO of Reputation.com and World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, and John Clippinger, Research Scientist at MIT Media Lab. The project’s mission is to encourage mainstream awareness and create a profitable, user-centric ecosystem around the new asset of personal data. This is not just a question of privacy and harm, but an inversion of the web as we know it. Past fortunes were claimed brokering our keystrokes and clicks, but a paradigm shift is eminent. It’s time individuals assert control over their own data. Join Michael Fertik and John Clippinger as they explore the new resource of personal data and the trillion dollar implications for today’s data-dependent world.