Last night there was a Debate at the House of Commons (In the Mother of All Parliaments) with the intriguing title:
"In digital, data is the only currency"
It was
sponsored by the IAB, and proposing it were Matt Brittin MD of Google UK and Louise Ainsworth, MD of Neilsen EMEA, and opposing were Graeme Hale MD of Interbrand and Mark Cridge, MD of Glue. Chair Cheryl Gillan MP bigged them up enough to make a Zulu
Imbongi blush - marvellous fun!
First Up - For - Matt Brittin
This was pretty much the GoogleLitany 2.0, everything data is for the best in this best of all worlds:
- Data helps people if it's easy to find, also finding people to talk to.
- Faster, more efficient businesses - and makes some businesses viable. Also allows testing of propositions
- Good for Democracy - (Morales Fark protests example)
- Data is Reithian Plus - entertains, educates and educates - and connects, contextualises and......controls (who said datamining?)?
- Web TV - People watching web tv are 1.5x more engaged than TV
- Kills the "hippo" - highest paid person opinion - noise that the old systems have
First Up - Against - Graeme Hale
Worries that in the real world we may have already lost the debate to Google, but let's look theoretically at what we are giving up. It was an amusing talk in the main, but the main themes were:
- The world is bigger than just data, tendency is to measure what is easily measurable - misses the point
- For lasting impact, progress needs to benefit people over all, not some people all over others
- Example Soviet society. - is it better now that communism is over - yes for some who are wealthy, but not not clear if true for the "Long Tail", How sustainable is this?
- c 2/3 of all net usage is for connection
- Data is not only form of currency
Second Up - For - Louise Ainsworth
This was a more nuanced view (in my view) than the Googleview, and dealt mainly with the issue that part of the resistance to data as a currency was the inability of the old order to make the necessary adjustments. She pointed out that the freeing up of data:
- Drives creativity and individualism...
- ...but puts pressure on high quality, objective work - what happens when all is left is twitter and the BBC
- Data as a currency is not yet properly valued - for example Digital media needs to be funded, needs data to drive the funding as no one will pay sans click - and yet we pay a lot for display ads in non digital media - need to bring that spend proportionately online
- People who now want "measures of emotional engagement" pushing metrics too far
Second Up - Against - Mark Cridge Glue
Mark got down to the guts of the Real Economics of the post-data digital age:
- Business is actually about generating attention - data is not enough
- The real fight is over emotion and ideas - data is used more to justify emotional decisions
- Thinking purely about data is like looking at marketing as purely direct marketing
- Not everything can be reduced to a transaction
- Data is infinitely makeable so not a scarcity based currency (ie can be inflated, suborned etc at will)
- Data is a commodity that measures the cost of everything but the value of nothing
The Peanut Gallery
And then on to the Questions - actually, this is where members of the audience can get up and make a 3 minute speech themselves. The room we were in had opposing Government and Opposition benches and those hanging microphones (as seen on TV) so your truly had to pop up and orate!
My point was basically that, if data were to be a digital currency, then it needs to be properly measured and mandated because right now theh "Data Banking" system was more like the Wild West. Another person later got up and made similar points, ie Data not ready to be a currency look at financial crisis parallel smart guys no control
Other discussions of note were:
Data as a currency has no gold standard:
- which data is the correct currency eg Nielsen vs Comscore traffic measures which differ
- Relative values of different data eg UGC vs Long Form Video on YouTube
The Google Party - twice when some particularly anti-data point was made a Google employee popped up with a counterpoint, such as:
- Real time data gives real time insight
- Data makes very accurate prediction. Tesco uses offline/ online model can predict sales to temp/season. Google could predict winner of Eurovision
The Google Opposition Alliance - rebutted the Googlepoints as they were made
- Real time data can give real time information but not insight
- Phileas Gage example - had a brain injury so couldn't connect the data processing and the feelings halves of brain - Phileas could calculate but couldn't make decisions as it wasn't linked
Debate ended about 33/67 against the motion, but I suspect the majority was heavily influenced by the view that data was the "only" currency was too strong. Hat tip to Abigail Harrison of TheBlueDoor for dragging me along (
here's her post on impressions of the debate for more depth)
Addendum - I got quite interested in the concept of data as a "currency" after this, not just from my thoughts above re managing it as a currency, but the broader thought of what a "currency" is in the digital era. To my mind time (or attention, 2.0-speak) is the "Gold Standard" as that is the valuable asset that cannot be manufactured, and all currencies can be traded against time. Time of course shifts in value - For example, real time is sometimes very valuable, but it can be low value if it is just filling in time waiting for something else. No more deep thoughts at this stage apart from fundamentally disagreeing with a
recent Web 2.0 Expo presentation in New York that argues that Web currencies are about the economics of abundance. This topic deserves fuller treatment later.
