Data are to this century what oil was to the last one: a driver of growth and change. Flows of data have created new infrastructure, new businesses, new monopolies, new politics and—crucially—new economics. Digital information is unlike any previous resource; it is extracted, refined, valued, bought and sold in different ways. It changes the rules for markets and it demands new approaches from regulators.
Many a battle will be fought over who should own, and benefit from, data. There is an awful lot to scrap over. IDC, a market-research firm, predicts that the “digital universe” (the data created and copied every year) will reach 180 zettabytes (180 followed by 21 zeros) in 2025
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