The Power and Strengths of Personal Data

Data has become an asset in every sector and discipline. The journey in generating, collecting, and recording data started with a caveman who illustrated personal and social life on cave walls. This process has continued throughout history in different formats, by which we now get an insight into the developments in history. With the advancement of the technology, in particular, with wide access to the internet and its connected devices (e.g., mobile phones, social media, internet of things) that are extensively used in our daily life, human has become a data generator and started contributing towards the accumulation of personal data sets. Although our digital world and digital family are getting larger exponentially day by day, generating a massive amount of personal data, and making some aspects of our daily life easier, it is, however, becoming more difficult to control and regulate. Every website, social media app, and internetenabled device that has been accessed is a source of “personal” data set, through which we help create several of our own digital twins. The data is then analyzed using advanced data analytics methods and artificial intelligence algorithms to help the digital companies understand and model people’s behaviors in their daily life such as habits, social relationships, health and well-being, and political opinions. They are also further used for several purposes such as to predict people’s next step (e.g., item to be purchased), to change their behaviors and minds as well as influencing their decision. We have already started seeing interesting examples of useful developments (e.g., driverless cars, robots), but also an increased number of worrying unethical use cases (e.g., cyber-attacks to both personal and commercial devices and accounts, and their involvement in elections and opinion polls). Having experienced the beauty of digital life, researchers, practitioners, policymakers need to further support the ethical development of digitallyenabled life, which is expected to provide an equal opportunity in several sectors (e.g., online education during the Covid-19 crises). However, due to several recent disturbing examples, the policymakers should help the digital market better controlled and regulated. This is the only way that we can make our digital world safer, and leave a more habitable digital environment for our future generation.

This short article provides a historical perspective of the generation, collection, and use of personal data in line with the technological developments, and concludes with some recommendations to the researchers, practitioners, users, and policymakers.