The wisdom of data

As cities, buildings, things and people become more connected, less attention will be paid to what is connected and how, but what can be done with the data. Mobile, apps, M2M and trillions of data touch points between humans, objects and devices are about to change the way we live and work once more. More stuff will be connected by default giving rise to greater automation tools and data.

The Associated Press is already doing this as it experiments with creating ‘thousands’ of sports news coverage through machine-written articles. The employment (job-cut) implications of automation are huge.

But in earlier times, when factory workers were replaced by machines, people were still needed – admittedly not as many – to operate and develop systems – and act on the data they had. Factories still needed someone to control the context of what was going on around the machines. “More demand.” “We don’t need that today.” “Broken pipes.” “It’s too hot in here.” An interface with reality if you like. We are likely to see the same cycle again in automation today only on a bigger scale with better data tools. People still need to be the API.

There are of course incredibly positive developments we will see through better use of connected devices as data. Last year at James’ Governor’s excellent ThingMonk event, someone stood up and talked about how people had beaten the Japanese government to collecting Geiger counter readings over the country through distributing radiation-measuring devices throughout the country and publishing the data online.

Medtech apps that gather data (eg MyFitnessPal) are changing level of insight people have into the way they use and abuse their bodies. Money analytics apps, payment platforms and banking models give people more insight into how they use money.

But none of these tools mean that people won’t get drunk, eat pizzas and spend money on crap. It just means they’ll have more tools to manage how they do that. Whether they decide to use that data to make better decisions is down to them.

The same goes for global organisations. The writing is on the wall. The data is there. They need to act faster, do better, adapt etc etc yawn. Whether they choose to use the right data and turn it into knowledge and wisdom is 100% their choice. And that comes down to how their leaders behave.

Data is abundant. Information is organised data – and there’s way too much of it to absorb. But knowledge and wisdom are in short supply. How we use data to get more wisdom is crucial for better success in big transformation initiatives. Until we better understand better cycles of data, we have no chance of bringing wisdom or effective change to any scenario. I would argue that goes for global sustainability, business transformation, energy use, better investments etc. etc.