Do I want control over the things that have value or my privacy settings?

Signals, spikes, pulses and waves are data that represent your real-time life and controlling them is game changing. The data that underpins signals, spikes, pulses and waves are in silos controlled by the likes of social media, TV, mobile and credit card companies who really don’t want to share, even though it is your data and you could benefit.

Privacy as control

There is a battle being fought for the protection of your data under the banner of privacy and tends to focus on your actual raw data (think tweets, location, blogs, updates or Facebook status) but do I really care about this short term, transient, real-time data or should I care more about what someone can do with the data. Yes control of the source prevents access but does not lead to control of the outcome, but when I consider that my data, on its own, has little value until it is put in context with others from my social group it changes my perception.

Considering the central part of the diagram. Knowing that with only a few exceptions we are not able to create a trigger (spike) that will get lot of people talking and create a trend.  But a spike needs the community to create reflections (signals) and refinement (pulses) before we come back to stable again (underlying signals), maybe at a different place but stable. All this raw data is real-time, fast changing and jolly interesting but how does it effect my slowly built and refined reputation, influence, authority, relevancy, preference, credibility, trust and reach; as these are what I really worry about, these create value for me and what I do want is to control and protect them.

Knowing that real-time social media interactions with spikes, pulses, waves and signals help to refine these personal valuable assets, who is creating this value for me and how do I gain control.

Here’s the issue.

Privacy allows you to control what data is shared. If you share nothing the only reputation, authority or influence you have if from what others say (not bad if you can) However, once your data is out there (assuming it is not trapped in a silo) anyone can do anything with it and there are many companies trying to create services that determine amongst other ideals, influence.  The algorithms these companies use will continually pick up your data as part of your interactions with spikes, signals, pulses and waves and use this to refine how you should be ranked, but because the data is freely available and they publish their view of you freely your have no control or where is goes, up or down.

PageRank

PageRank was ideal when the need was for slow, authority driven search.  If you understood the algorithm you could affect your standing in the results, hence a good reason to keep it hidden to avoid bias. The same concept would appear to apply to digital influence.  If you know how the algorithm works and what data it is looking for, you can quickly modify your behaviour and rise up their ranking, leagues, ladders and competitions.  In these cases, your influence and reputation is primarily built on what you say about yourself.  PageRank was built on authority (reciprocal links) and in this real-time web we have moved from authority of others to what you say about yourself as the prime driver, which could be a little dangerous. But if others are unwilling to share their data about themselves or about you - we may grind to a halt.

So What

Privacy protects the input but does not give you control of the value

Not sharing (staying private) means we depend more on what some say about themselves which brings about a significant bias

Real time data should be thrown away fast and ranked the lowest in terms of changing important value services

Determining reputation, influence, authority, relevancy, preference, credibility, trust and reach is slow and hard in both the real and digital world.

I would welcome views and input on this….tony