Have Data—Will Travel

IMF Blog, March 3, 2017

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Have Data—Will Travel

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Bibliographic details

• Authors: iMFdirect
• Published: March 3, 2017

Key messages on technology and data

• “Ninety percent of the world’s data has been produced in the last two years. In fact, if you take the sum of all the information produced by human kind—from paintings on cave walls—to the year 2003, the sum of that data we now produce every two days.”
• “Land was the raw material of the agricultural age, iron was the raw material of the industrial age, and data is the raw material of the information age.”
• Businesses that capitalize on new data will be leading the pack.
• Digitization is producing rapid change that outpaces many people’s ability to adapt: “And this is the trick, because human beings are more difficult to upgrade than software.”

Perspectives and credentials

• Speaker: Alec Ross.
• Roles noted: led technology policy for U.S. presidential campaigns; served as Senior Advisor for Innovation to the U.S. Secretary of State.
• Subject of discussion: his new book that looks at the technological forces he believes will shape the next 20 years.

Implications and narrative

• Data is framed as the central raw material of the information age, analogous to land in the agricultural age and iron in the industrial age.
• The scale and velocity of data generation are emphasized as unprecedented and concentrated in recent years.
• A policy and business challenge identified: closing the gap between rapid technological change and human capacity to adapt (upskill/reskill).

Media

• Podcast available (embedded SoundCloud): https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/309349965

Source: iMFdirect, March 3, 2017.